Global Clean Energy Holdings has signed an agreement with the Department of Agriculture to participate in the agency’s Climate-Smart Camelina project. 

The Torrance energy company can now start on its $30 million pilot program to measure and validate the advantages of camelina as an ultralow-carbon nonfood renewable fuel feedstock. 

Camelina grain is grown for use as a source for Global Clean Energy’s renewable fuels produced from its Bakersfield renewable fuels refinery.

The pilot program will be funded through a Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant. The deal was signed on May 31.

As the owner of the world’s largest camelina patent and intellectual property portfolio, Global Clean Energy’s subsidiary Sustainable Oils Inc. contracts directly with farmers to grow camelina in key regions of the U.S. including Colorado, Idaho, Kansas and Washington, among other states, according to the company. 

Global Clean Energy Chief Executive Richard Palmer said the company was excited to begin work to help prove what it has known internally for years – that camelina has the potential to be the lowest carbon-intensity feedstock option on the market.

Climate-Smart Camelina is a large-scale pilot project to implement, measure, and validate the climate advantages of the grain in a variety of crop-growing methods.

The project will accelerate farmers’ adoption of camelina grown to produce feedstock for renewable biofuels and chemicals without causing land-use change and while increasing carbon capture in the soil, the release added.

Further, the project will support market development to provide additional revenue streams to growers and provide a premium for this low carbon-intensity crop. 

The project will use multiple methods of data collection to cross-reference approaches, calibrate sensors and validate models for long-term low-cost scalability.

The project hopes to offer several benefits to growers and the environment, including increasing overall soil health; increasing the total carbon sequestered within soils; decreasing the carbon intensity associated with growing camelina; obtaining more accurate measurements to prove environmental benefits of growing camelina; and providing growers with access to reliable measurements, the company said.