A plant in Vernon
GeoGreen brought biofuel production and a truck fleet together in an industrial city. Building the operation meant working through the questions the plant raised, from its process to its permits.
GeoGreen Biofuels
I was founder and CEO of GeoGreen Biofuels Inc. from 2005 to 2011. We made biodiesel from used cooking oil at our plant in Vernon, just outside downtown Los Angeles. It was a different kind of business from real estate, with its own engineering and permitting challenges.
Getting through permitting
Plenty of people said a plant handling that much methanol could never be permitted there. We got it done.
That chapter taught me how to take an unusual idea through regulators and into the real world. You have to explain the project, answer the questions and stay with the work. The plant needed that persistence as much as it needed equipment.
Recognition
In 2010, I was honored as Los Angeles Sustainable Entrepreneur of the Year. It’s recognition I still value from a chapter that prepared me for what came next.
What I carried forward
When HiberTec came along, I had already taken a project through a process people said it would never pass. Construction gave me the next piece: an architect and engineers who could help turn the idea into a design.