Simonpietri Enterprises Turns Demolition and Construction Waste into Energy

2024 SmallBiz Editor’s Choice Award winner: President Joelle Simonpietri helps supply O‘ahu with renewable gas and jet fuel, with new ventures on the way.

If it seems like hotels are constantly undergoing renovations, it’s because they are.

“You have a hotel that renovates 500 rooms, getting rid of carpet and paneling and flooring. They do this every few years; that’s why the level of construction and demolition waste is so high on O‘ahu,” says Joelle Simonpietri, president of Simonpietri Enterprises. “We can’t turn it all into energy but we can certainly try.”

The company’s Aloha Carbon is a brand, she explains, that will make renewable fuel out of solid waste materials, such as treated and painted lumber that would normally go into a landfill. The energy salvaged can be turned into hydrogen, renewable gas and renewable jet fuel.

“For the Aloha Carbon project in Hawai‘i, we are focusing on waste generated on O‘ahu for energy users on O‘ahu,” says Simonpietri. “There is no plan to ship to the continental U.S.” Keeping things this local, she notes, is unusual in the fuel industry.

The company won a $206,500 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study locally sourced green waste – biomass from invasive and wildfire-prone plants – with the goal of transforming it into organic fertilizer for farms and nurseries.

Simonpietri is a former active-duty U.S. Navy officer who previously co-led a public-private effort to demonstrate commercially viable aviation biofuel production in Hawai‘i.

She founded her company 17 years ago and it’s gone through several iterations of research and consulting before its current phase.

“I’ve always been a greenie,” says Simonpietri. “I don’t know if it’s that I saw the future in renewable energy so much as I’ve been doing it whether it’s popular or not. It’s necessary. There’s a whole lot of waste in our economy, as well as opportunities to solve problems along the way.”

Simonpietri’s team has grown to eight, plus several interns.

And her company is still growing. Next up is the Aloha Sustainable Materials Recycling and Fertilizer Facility that’s being developed on a 5-acre site in Kapolei. The goal is up to 200 tons per day of construction and demolition waste, which is 20-40 truckloads, to arrive at the facility daily, to be turned into renewable energy, says Simonpietri.

The company aims to receive and sort waste by spring of next year. For the energy conversion part of the project, to power the waste recycling and organic fertilizer manufacturing, they are aiming to bring online by the end of 2027, but this will depend on permitting and construction.

“When people look at a heap of construction and demolition debris,” says Simonpietri. “I see a pile of possibilities, not a pile of junk.”