We’re not going it alone here. We’re not looking to become a vertically integrated fuel producer one facility at a time. We think that’s a very slow way to grow a new supply chain. Instead, we’re working in a very coordinated way with upstream and downstream counterparties, to develop a solution that will scale to meet the needs of this industry, so we can build this supply chain that you see on the screen. Or even better, this one that has 100 Bioleum hubs using 25 million tons of biomass, producing 2.5 billion gallons of advanced biofuel with extremely low CI scores. So I’m sure you’re thinking, is this even possible? Is this another dream? It seems really big. And let’s look at the numbers. 25 million tonnes of biomass is not very material.
The Department of Energy has identified a billion tons of biomass that could be used for fuel and is talking about expanding to 2 billion tons of biomass. In just over seven years, around 200 corn ethanol plants were built when that technology reached economic viability, with multiple parties working together at the same time. Finally, the refiners are sitting there saying, they see the growth in this market, they’re investing in more capacity, and they’re concerned about their available feedstock from vegetable oils running out in the next five to seven years or so. So we think the numbers are supportive of it. And it’s a modest goal. But the better question is why Bioleum, why us? And the answer is our performance. The CI score. We create the most emissions reduction for our downstream processors.
Our ethanol with a CI score of 16 substantially beats the alternatives, corn ethanol and sugarcane ethanol. Our Bioleum is class leading when compared to the other feedstocks usable today in existing renewable fuel refineries, like soybean oil or used cooking oil. And the fuels that are produced in those refineries using these feedstocks beat the alternatives again, every time with substantial reduction versus their petroleum fuel alternatives. Refiners need low carbon feedstocks and our Bioleum hubs enable them at scale. Alright, so how does it work? Let’s go a little bit deeper on to the supply chain and then the processes inside the hub. Our Bioleum hubs taken forest product waste and other qualifying feedstocks, along with fats, oils and greases, as well as hydrogen, produce three primary output streams, ethanol, the D3 cellulosic ethanol that carries the highest value that we saw earlier, our Bioleum HBO, which is a drop in feedstock for existing renewable refineries who can produce SAF and renewable diesel from that feedstock, as well as green chemicals like furfural and glycerol, which are important renewable precursor chemicals for many other things.
Inside the hub, we have a number of different processes occurring and we break them down into a series of pathways. Now there’s three of them that we’re going to talk about here today. Pathway number one is our first commercial pathway. This takes woody biomass, separates the cellulose and Bioleum. This is what we’ve been talking about for the last two years. We convert the cellulose to sugar and on to ethanol. The Bioleum again is combined with the free fatty acids extracted from the fats, oils and greases to produce the by Bioleum HBO, the drop in feedstock for the renewable refinery. Pathway number two, which is also commercial ready today, uses kraft lignin. Kraft lignin is a byproduct of the kraft pulping process, also known as the sulphate process, which has been in use since the late 1800s in pulp and paper industry.
In the 1930s, they had a breakthrough where they created a near closed loop process and the lignin that came out of the wood is used for heat and power. In this process, they produce an excess of lignin. Now lignin can be drawn off and converted into Bioleum for conversion into more Bioleum HBO, and this is our second pathway. Or third pathway, we’ve also talked about before, it’s the subject of our grant that’s been funded by the DOE. We’re happy to say we received notification a few weeks ago that the grant has been approved to move forward. We’re in final planning with Department of Energy, and are expected to kickoff here in the next few weeks. And we look for a bigger announcement when that occurs. But this process, the circled area around process G uses technology from a company called Xylome, where we convert our sugar into fat to feed back into the Bioleum HBO production process.
And the project we’re working on here is testing the economic viability of this process at scale. Now, there’s a lot of different technologies here and a lot of different processes. And we get a lot of questions about where did they all come from. Most of this has been developed by our team, acquired by our team and part of the core package of our technology. Process A, our Bioleum process; process D, the upgrading of FOGs; process F, the upgrading of kraft lignin are all 100% Comstock Fuels technology. Process B, converting from cellulose to sugar is a Comstock Fuels process that uses biologics from Novozymes, who’s the best in the business. And process E is where we’ve integrated the technology we’ve exclusively licensed from RenFuel, which is a fast track to us getting to that drop in feedstock for existing refiners in operation today.
And then, again, process G is Xylome’s process that we’re validating today in our project with the DOE. As we’re doing this and we’re integrating technology and we’re developing technology, we’re also thinking about downstream processes all the time. We also look at how can we integrate downstream, whose technology does our process, our products slide directly into and compatibly work with. And these are just a few examples. There’s a lot of downstream processes that can use our products. We think these are some of the best out there. And it’s worth noting that these are also fellow members of the ABFA with us. So we’re at the technology there. I’m sure everyone will take a look at the slides. Please do send us any questions you have, and we’ll do our best to answer them.
But the real question, back to the beginning, is how are we going to build 100 Bioleum hubs. Sounds like a big goal. The first thing we’re going to do is build one. It’s going to be 100,000 dry metric tons per year capacity. It’s going to produce $40 million to $50 million per year in income from our projections today. It’s going to cost about $300 million to build. We have a plan in place to use non-dilutive funding at the project level to fund the build of this first facility. Now, the first facility does a lot of things. It proves commercial viability, it derisks for future projects, and it gives us a testbed to optimize and to add on future development as our R&D projects proceed. But beyond that, we’re looking to develop and license hubs 2 through 100 and even beyond that.
Our full scale hub will be 250,000 dry tons per year capacity. It’ll produce around $100 million per year in projected income for that licensee who owns and operates this facility. And with today’s estimates, it’ll cost about $500 million to build. Now the work we do with hub number one to derisk the future is going to allow us to bring up multiple EPCs, executing multiple projects for multiple clients simultaneously, so we can build this supply chain industrywide in very short order. We think the economics [indiscernible]. Over $15 million in annual royalties for each hub back to Comstock Fuels. This is over $70 per metric ton of biomass. It makes the economics great for the customer and it makes very good economics for us. Let’s address a couple of questions upfront with how we’re putting this together and where we’re getting the pieces from.
And the first question that I always get asked is where does the feedstock come from to get started? So let’s start with some of the secondary feedstocks. The fats, oils and greases today are the primary feedstock for these renewable diesel refinery customers. What we’re really doing in our process is enhancing those fats oils and greases. We’re increasing our capacity and we’re increasing our performance. So the supply chain for them in our first facility will come with our partners. The hydrogen we require, well, that’s also an ingredient, a primary input to the renewable diesel refineries. And our partners here have very good insight into the supply chains for hydrogen and how we should site our facility to make this efficient. The biomass is really a function of this.
Once we have our renewable diesel refinery interested in Bioleum, they’re saying that they want to buy it, well, the forest products industry is very pragmatic. And they’re bringing that feedstock to us, they see the opportunity that we’re creating, and they want to be part of it. Both the upstream and downstream see the opportunity we’re creating, and both of them want to be part of our new supply chain. We enable the downstream with new, better feedstock. We enable the upstream with new high value markets for their forest product waste. Both groups are interested in licensing and operating hubs. Both groups are using their resources to help us get there. Our upcoming milestones are very straightforward. A commitment for offtake, a commitment for feedstock and a commitment for the funding we need to develop this project for hub number one.
