Welcome to the Aemetis First Quarter 2021 Earnings Review Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Todd Waltz, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Aemetis, Inc. Mr. Waltz, you may begin.

Thank you, Melinda. Welcome to Aemetis first quarter 2021 earnings review conference call. Joining us for the call today is Eric McAfee, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Aemetis; and Andy Foster, President of Aemetis Advanced Fuels. We suggest visiting our website at aemetis.com to review today's earnings press release, corporate presentations, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, recent press releases and previous earnings conference calls. The presentation for today's call is available for review or download on the Investors section of the aemetis.com website. Before we begin our discussion today, I'd like to read the following disclaimer statement. During today's call, we'll be making forward-looking statements including without limitation statements with respect to our future stock performance, plans, opportunities and expectations with respect to financing activity and the execution of our business plan. These statements must be considered in conjunction with the disclosures and cautionary warnings that appear in our SEC filings. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements made on this call involve risk and uncertainties, and that future events may differ materially from the statements made. For additional information please refer to the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings which are posted on our website and are available from the company without charge. Our discussion on the call today will include a review of non-GAAP measures as a supplement to financial results based on GAAP. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable measures is included in our earnings release for the quarter ended on March 31, 2021, which is available on our website. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as net income or loss plus to the extent deducted in calculating such net income, interest expense, income tax expense, intangible and other amortization expense, accretion expense, depreciation expense and share-based compensation expense. Now I'd like…

Thanks Todd. As we discuss the results from Q1 2021, I encourage you to consider viewing the Aemetis corporate presentation, which can be found on the homepage of the aemetis.com website. Aemetis was founded in 2006. We have grown into four lines of business which are focused on producing renewable natural gas from dairy biogas, with a negative 426 carbon intensity for transportation fuel to replace high carbon intensity diesel and gasoline. Renewable fuels including low carbon and negative carbon intensity ethanol, high grade distilled biodiesel, renewable jet and diesel using cellulosic hydrogen for waste wood and byproducts including carbon dioxide and corn oil enhanced by carbon dioxide injection wells, we plan to sequester CO2 and significantly reduce the carbon intensity of our products, health safety products including sanitizer, alcohol, refined glycerin, blended hand sanitizer and other health safety products and technology development to maximize the value of our products and processes. We own and operate production facilities with more than 110 million gallons per year of capacity in the U.S. and India. Included in our production portfolio is the largest ethanol plant in California, a 65 million gallon per year fuel ethanol plant located in Keyes, California, near Modesto that we leased in 2009, retrofitted for 18 months, began operations in mid-2011 and have owned since 2012, when the original shareholders converted their ethanol plant ownership into about 10% of the common stock of Aemetis. We also built, own and operate a 50 million gallon per year capacity distilled biodiesel and refined glycerin biorefinery on the East Coast of India near the Port City of Kakinada. We have operated in India since 2007, we founded the India Biodiesel Manufacturers Association, and our Managing Director serves as Chairman of the Association on behalf of the five major biodiesel producers in…

Thanks, Eric. At Aemetis, we're focused on producing below zero carbon intensity products, including the production of negative carbon intensity renewable natural gas and renewable fuels. Our products maximize the value of carbon credits under the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard, the Federal Renewable Fuel Standard and IRS 45Q tax credits, while reducing operating costs by using waste materials as feedstock. An excellent example of a low carbon sustainable circular bio-economy that Eric spoke of is our dairy renewable natural gas project, which is designed to have many synergies with our Keyes ethanol plant. Our Keyes ethanol plant uses agricultural feedstock that absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere during plant growth, from which our production facility produces ethanol and animal feed. The Aemetis ethanol plant delivers 65 million gallons per year of renewable ethanol, but also produces about 2 million pounds per day of wet distillers grains that supply approximately 80 local dairies and feeds more than 100,000 cows. Methane commonly known as natural gas is a very potent greenhouse gas that is up to 80 times more destructive than carbon dioxide in warming our planet's atmosphere. Approximately 25% of California’s methane emissions come from the newer waste ponds on dairy farms. To reduce these damaging methane emissions, California passed a law commonly known as Senate Bill 1383 that mandates a 40% reduction in methane emitted by large dairy lagoons by the year 2030. Biomethane sourced from dairies can be used directly in the form of renewable compressed natural gas to replace gasoline or diesel fuel in cars, trucks and buses to significantly reduce carbon emissions and air pollution. The dairy cows generate waste that is captured in the covered lagoon anaerobic dietary digesters that we're currently building at dairies, producing biogas that is cleaned up, pressurized and sent through --…

Thanks, Andy. Let's review our biodiesel business in India. Last quarter, our Universal Biofuels subsidiary in India bid on a portion of a newly issued $900 million biodiesel purchase tender offer for about 225 million gallons by the three India government oil marketing companies. In the past, the OMC bidding process required a one year fixed price for biodiesel. However, the OMC bidding prices for biodiesel was not successful in 2020, due to a high level of volatility in crude oil and other markets. So in response to requests by biodiesel producers, including Aemetis, the oil marketing company contracting process has been changed to a monthly bid instead of a one year contract with a fixed price. We expect that the new monthly OMC bidding process will be successful during 2021 allowing large volumes of biodiesel to be blended into petroleum diesel to improve the air quality and reduce carbon emissions in India. The second wave of COVID related shutdowns has delayed the ramp up of production at the India plant, but we are well positioned for a rapid revenue increase, as large government purchases of renewable biodiesel occur to meet climate change and air quality goals once the current COVID crisis facing India begins to subside, hopefully in the coming weeks and months. Let's discuss our carbon zero renewable jet and diesel fuel project using negative carbon intensity hydrogen in Riverbank, California. We're pleased that the Aemetis carbon zero biorefinery under development at Riverbank near Modesto continues to achieve major milestones including the significant development we just achieved through the issuance of 19 separate air permits for our Riverbank refinery, otherwise known as the ATC or Authority To Construct. Though further amendments are planned as a part of final construction engineering, the ATC air permit allows us to move…

Thank you, Mr. McAfee. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And we'll go right to the line of Manav Gupta with Credit Suisse.

So my first question here is that when I look at your business growth plan, and in the near-term, the biggest growth is coming from dairy RNG. Is there any reason why I should be worried that Aemetis will not be able to hit those dairy RNG growth numbers? I think our EBITDA guidance is $45 million 2022, going up to $110 million 2024. So is there any reason, wins, LCFS, competitors, why you think there could be an issue with you hitting that guidance?

At this point in time, we have removed some of the key barriers such as the California Environmental Quality Act permit for our pipeline, which we announced within the past month has been granted. And frankly, we've already signed up the key contracts with the dairies for the execution through the next full -- up to the 17 dairies that are challenges over the next year. So I would say the key project challenges are behind us. We are executing on the Renewable Energy for America program, USDA loan, you may know that separately we have $125 million USDA financing commitment letter signed already. But in this dairy biogas process, we've invested about $30 million of equity already. We have no debt in the subsidiary at all. And so the next phase is funding the USDA refunding. That program is a very common program, it's very fast. It's typically a three to six months process, from application to completion and we're well into that process. So assuming that, that can continue to move forward, I would expect we wouldn't see any interruption in our execution over the next roughly 18 months. And that program would allow us to continue funding after that. So we really don't have exposure to needing additional equity or similar contributions. I think the refinancing is the way forward. I should mention though that this project is a very, very attractive project. It's the lowest carbon renewable fuel on the market today at a negative 426. And there are other agencies and tax free municipal markets, et cetera that seem to be very, very excited about this. So I anticipate we will be executing on the USDA for the next year or so. But I could see a scenario in which after that tax free long-term financing or other sources of financing will be used. So we're really just at a -- I think, at financing execution phase at this point time. The project milestones, I believe are well under control. And we're right on track on those items.

And then Eric, what is not in the guidance is the carbon capture and sequestration, which came out a little bit after the guidance. So if you could talk about that opportunity, from your perspective, how much you can capture and sequester. But as I understand the size of the facility is much bigger than what you can utilize. So is there an opportunity to get third-party carbon capture opportunity. I mean, what kind of opportunity is there to capture third-party carbon and put it in the ground?

You were correct. The Stanford University Center for Carbon Capture Study reviewing 61 of the largest carbon emission sources in California identified that our sites would be able to do about 1 million metric tons of CO2 injection per year at our Keyes plant between the plant itself and the biogas carbon, we produce about 200,000 metric tons of CO2 per year at 52 dairies. So 1 million minus 200,000 leaves about 800,000 metric tons per year, that third parties, which under the Stanford study identified would be oil refineries would be the next category of carbon emitters that would be most attractive for sequestration. We have already had meetings with major oil refiners in California, there is a strong appetite to work with us and basically piggyback on the extensive EPA process that we're going through. One of the unique opportunities we have is that our CO2 pipelines either will be very, very short, I mean a matter of a couple 100 yards, or 1 mile or 2, just basically insignificant compared to the Midwest pipelines, so it’s a $2 billion pipeline being proposed to go from Iowa with North Dakota, another I think $1.5 billion Blackstone and Valero pipeline being proposed. In our project, our pipeline costs are I mean de minimis, a couple of million dollars maybe -- would be -- if we had to go 1 mile or 2. So we're just in very unique position to execute quickly and don't have to wait for permitting et cetera. These third parties would be an opportunity for us to essentially have the well already built, and we just move the CO2 in via rail or via truck, you may note that we use biogas in trucking. So we're in a very, very unique position in which we can be fueling our own trucks with our own biogas. And if you look at the economics of biogas, as you can see that's a very low cost fuel price to use. So our plan is to complete these, what for us is essentially it's an offtake agreement but it's more of a partnership relationship with oil refiners. And the ones we're focusing on in the Bay Area. But frankly, the economics work almost equally as well for LA refiners. And I would expect to see reports on those arrangements over the next quarter.

Next, we go to the line of Derrick Whitfield with Stifel.

Thanks and good afternoon, all. And also thanks Eric for your prepared remarks on your Board and your company's culture and values. Perhaps beginning with that, there's been a lot of undue attention recently focused on your history in relationship with Nevo Motors. For the benefit of investors listening in today's call, could you speak to that history and put it in perspective? And then also speak to the opportunities you see in your low cost investment in Nevo Motors?

Sure, absolutely. Aemetis is a below zero carbon renewable fuels producer. And in order for us to monetize the biogas we produce the ethanol we produce, frankly, even the renewable diesel we produce, we are strongly benefited if it goes into trucks, there's a multiplier, and some other reasons why displacing diesel in transportation is much more valuable than displacing gasoline. And yet in the marketplace today, there are no truck companies that use ethanol as the range extender for an electric truck. And actually, it's a very simple reason, ethanol engines are like gasoline engines, they don't have the torque, they don't have the pulling power. And that's why when you go out and look at Class 8 large over the road trucks, they're virtually all diesel trucks, you don't see gasoline trucks pulling down -- 80,000 pound truck down the road. Likewise, we don't add Aemetis have access to the infrastructure to build a truck. So as we look closely at what the discipline is that we need to apply in our business, we wanted to focus on producing these carbon negative fuels. And I think our presentation laid out a pretty disciplined plan to take advantage of our excellent position as an ethanol producer supplying over 80 dairies and our ability to produce the biogas molecule. I have a background as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, have funded about 25 companies. I founded about 8 public companies, four were oil companies, 2 were biofuels companies, including Pacific Ethanol. And so it didn't take long for us to decide, somebody needed to go and invest the capital, develop the technology and deploy electric trucks with ethanol range extenders, opening an entirely new market for ethanol in the U.S., electric trucks with biogas range extenders, expanding our ability…

It did. Thanks, Eric. And then as my follow-up. I wanted to focus on your carbon zero project. Could you speak to market offtake interest in that project and comment on when you simply be in a position to announce offtake commitments?

We are currently in paperwork with two oil refining companies that have strong marketing presence in California. I'd say easily among the largest suppliers of diesel and seem to be renewable diesel in California. And I would expect that documentation, which is moving at the pace of major oil companies should be able to close certainly in the next several months. We don't control the lawyers at the major oil companies. But we've had a very, very high level -- I'd almost say that no one has said they're not interested. What we've been able to do is pick various strategic relationships where we have multiple points of contact that are synergistic with our business. And so we're looking to execute on that.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright.

With respect to the dairy digester deployments, can you give us an update on how many are deployed now? And I know you have provided some color on how the revenue recognition for this looks. But if you could remind investors listening in, that would be very helpful?

Sure. We've completed two dairy digesters, a 4 mile pipeline. And Andy, why don’t you give, how we're doing over there?

Yes, Amit, so we have two that are currently operating and sending gas to the ethanol plant for process energy. We have five that are either permitted or mostly through permitting that will begin construction on in the next -- call the next 30 to 60 days. We'll have five more that we'll be getting in the third quarter. So we'll have -- by the end of this year, we'll have 10 digester projects underway under construction. We're also beginning on Monday the construction of our gas cleanup hub at the Keyes facility, which will take the gas that's piped in from the dairies and clean it up through Air Liquide membrane system and then we'll be ready for interconnection to the PG&E pipeline or our CNG station at the ethanol plant. We're going to begin the construction on that. All of the permitting work has been done and we're going to start pouring the foundation next week on that, expect that to be done by late second quarter, early third quarter. So I think everything is moving along the pace. The only challenge that we found is the counties -- because of COVID a lot of the counties are back to the counties are backed up in terms of their ability to process permits. We're not having any pushback on the permits. They're all very strongly supportive of our project, it's just workload. And they're getting -- the economy is picking up in California. So they're getting something like 30 new permit requests a week from various projects around the county. So kind of working through that. The fact that we have a good relationship with them is helping us move the process along. But I'd say to answer -- circle back to the beginning of your question, we should be at a place where we'll have 10 projects underway certainly by the end of this year, and five of those projects will be pretty close to completion by the end of the year or beginning of Q1 next year.

And with respect to biodiesel sales in India, it doesn't look like there were any sales in 1Q. Is this because of the change in the bid process or is it because of other reasons?

It’s permanently driven by COVID. The bid process has actually improved to benefit us. But there's some really strict measures that had to be done to protect our employees and vendors in India.

Understood. And your presentation, Eric has around 52 million coming from India biodiesel sales for '21? Is that still something that you think is achievable or should we sort of adjust our expectations for biodiesel revenues this year?

I think that COVID will have an impact on this year. At full operation 12 months, it's $168 million operation. So to tell you the truth, it's all about how the COVID and OMC tender process kind of rolls out in the second half of this year, we could very easily meet this year's expectations. It's really only about -- it’s less than a third of what our total operating expense -- opportunity is. The unknown really is how this COVID situation affects India. I'm sure you're aware of how dramatic this second phase has been for them. But it could be just as dramatic that they recover as the vaccine start distributing, et cetera. So currently, I would not change that. We might revisit it in the third quarter, we'll have a lot more visibility then. But certainly we're set up to just start the plant and run it at 100% capacity the day you started. And that that's all depending on these external factors.

And with respect to sort of managing the crush spread, et cetera, for that business right now, is there anything you're doing unique or is there any opportunities to manage some of these things better? Or are we just sort of dependent on volatility in the commodity space right now or the ethanol margins?

Andy, you want to take that?

Yes, I'd say unfortunately, I wish there was more we could do. I think hedging in this kind of a market right now is a pretty dangerous strategy because we're not located near the corn. I think if we were in the Midwest, some of the Midwest producers are able to do that because of their unique situation with local corn bases. But we're just not in that position. I think I'd say, on the upside for us when we've been through a similar experience, and I would say it was 2016 or…?

2013, half of….

Where there was a drought or some other event that was going on that caused essentially a shortage. We work with J.D. Heiskell as our corn merchandiser based out of Omaha, a great company, 100-year old company. And they have the ability to draw from grain elevators, all over the Midwest. In fact, I think that year, we received grain from something like 25 different corn elevators. And that gives us a dramatic advantage in the marketplace. Midwest plants are not set up to receive grain from any other source other than trucks locally. So when they run out of corn locally, they're done. There's really nothing they can do. And I've talked to -- in the past couple weeks, I've probably talked to six different producers in the Midwest, who said, this is the one time I wish I was a destination plant because you guys have the ability to find it, you can bring it in from the Eastern Corn Belt if we wanted to. I mean, it gets expensive when you do that. But I think that is the one advantage we have in a very -- what's going to be a very volatile, very difficult year on the corn supply side. So I think, we're going to do the best we can. But I think the idea of trying to hedge as a destination plant with this volatility could end up costing us some pain. So we're unfortunately sort of stuck with what we're at.

And I’d like to say we don't sell corn, we have to sell ethanol. So the demand for ethanol that’s actually going to determine our cash flow. We're seeing very, very strong demand for ethanol right now and shortages in the Western PADD area.

Yes PADD 5, which as you know is the Western United States, for the past three months has shown record lows from an inventory perspective. Part of that is attributable to the giant storm that hit Texas, and the Southwest, still actually having impacts, as you all probably know, across the economy, that is starting to work itself out. But California sort of went from zero to 60 miles per hour in the last couple of months in terms of gasoline demand. And so we're seeing, I think, at least through the third quarter, which is about all the visibility you're going to get in a market like this right now. I think we're seeing that we're going to continue to see strong demand in California, in our local truck market, which is really what we serve within 100 mile radius of our plant. We continue to see strong ethanol demand. So it's one of those deals where if ethanol can keep pace with corn, we can continue to have an operating positive contribution margin. If we see a retreat in ethanol pricing and the corn situation stays where it is, it's where it gets a little challenging.

I know there was discussion previously about maybe allocating some capacity to high grade industrial quality alcohol. Is that still in play? Or should we not really assume any contribution from those efforts?

We have ongoing discussions. I'll let Eric speak to the sanitizer business, but from a potable alcohol perspective, we have ongoing relationship with a couple of very large producers in our area, in fact, have discussions scheduled for later this month. So I think we're going to continue to see as now we have a DSP permit from the TTB, we’re allowed to do that. I think we're going to continue to try to grow our potable alcohol, grain neutral spirits business, that's a nice piece of business. I won't say it's huge volumes, but it's a good solid business that allows us some diversification. And I think the same is probably true on the sanitizer side where we see opportunities to do that. We'll take advantage of those opportunities.

Right. And we're waiting for the FDA to actually enforce the pharmacopoeia standard again. That'll shut down a lot of the cheap imports of low quality products. And now over 200 of them have been warned by the FDA, is not meeting FDA specs. So we're waiting for the market to kind of clean up, as we see this.

And the market is -- I mean, the channel was jammed pretty significantly last year. So that there's not a ton of demand from non-traditional USP sources right now. Because anybody that goes to the supermarket, you can find bottles and bottles and stacks and stacks of hand sanitizer. So the market needs to settle itself out a little bit. And then we do believe that's an ongoing opportunity for us.

Next we go to the line of Jordan Levy with Truist Securities.

Two quick questions. First, just wanted to touch on the Department of Energy grant, you all mentioned that in relation to the cellulose extraction from the orchard wood. To my understanding that you guys haven't put a lot of weight into this in your five-year plan, but just wanted to take your thoughts high level on the potential that sort of project and what the economics of that could look like and what percent in that sort of time?

Sure. Thanks, Jordan. The first step in our jet and diesel hydrogen production process is to extract sugars from the waste wood, because we have an existing 65 million gallon plant that can process those sugars with very minimal additional capital expenditures that of course, being our corn ethanol plant. So our overall strategy is to wean ourselves gradually off of being 100% dependent on corn. So as we increase the volumes of wood, we're using a jet fuel, we're increasing the amount of sugar we can get from that wood. And every 10% of the corn starch that we decrease at our corn ethanol plant saves us purchasing costs of corn, and generates a lower carbon intensity score for the ethanol being produced and generates a different [renewable identification] under -- number. So we estimate about $30 million per year of additional positive cash flow from our corn ethanol plant, probably 10% of the feedstock that is displaced. We've done these numbers a number of times, and they always come out around 30 million, sometimes it's 28 million, sometimes it's 35 million. But about $30 million. This is per 10%. This is linear, so it doesn't decrease. If we go 20% then it's $60 million, et cetera. The scale of our sugar extraction technology, which is patented, the patent was granted in January of this year is exclusively licensed to us for non-commercial forests. We're using it for orchards, which is a 1.5 million acres and 1.6 million tons each year in California. That technology now needs to go to the pilot scale. And so the Department of Energy grant program is specifically to fund pilot projects. And it's a two phase program. It's a $1 million grant award for engineering and some other things and then a $15 million to $40 million grant award for actual construction of the plant. The size of our plant would be a small commercial size because of how it’s integrated whether other facilities, it actually would be projected to be positive cash flow upon its construction. So we're calling it the pilot plant, but it's a pilot commercial facility. And then we would just expand it that point on. So it's a gradual technology development we've been working on for probably four years. Now we have a patented technology and the Department of Energy has recognized its unique opportunity to have a broad impact on the corn ethanol business. And not just our plant, but frankly, every plant could benefit from this technology.

Thanks, Eric. And just as a follow-up just pivoting back to the RNG business. Just wanted to get your updated thoughts as it relates to kind of the long-term trajectory of that business and the ability to scale it beyond the 17 and even potentially beyond the 15, the five year plan, just noting kind of the increased competition we've seen just in general in the RNG space, and you're kind of in unique positioning geographically, just wanted to get your thoughts on how you think you can continue to scale that business?

We are actively interacting with the dairies in the region, the counties that we operate, and we, of course, supply about 80 dairies with feedstock. Putting 36 miles of pipeline in the ground obviously makes us the obvious choice for any dairies within a few miles of our dairy -- of our gas pipeline. And that's all occurring over the next 12 months. So we continue to expand those relationships. Through approximately 1,200 dairies in California we are regionally the leader in our market, just because of our obvious connection to the local dairy market through the animal feed business. I would say that over the next year, our job is to dominate the region that we're in. And then a year from now, expand our footprint to other regions of California. If you look at the market in California there’s really only a couple of developers, and one of which is in the South part of the valley. And one is sort of in the Central part of the valley. And we're sort of the North part of the valley. And we have good relationships with the dairies in our area. And I think we're showing we can very, very quickly ramp up those dairies into being customers. So out of the 1,200 dairies, our goal is to have a substantial portion of them.

This is Andy, I would just add to that, that we're deep into conversations with some -- all the brand name, offtake partners that you all are familiar with. We're having all those conversations. But what we're trying to do is come up with a strategy that will address -- I think the underlying question you ask, which is, at some point does California becomes saturated? Really I think that's kind of what everybody's concern is because now you've got outside of the state developers coming in, and it's kind of the Wild West. I think Eric touched on two things that give us an advantage. One is our existing relationship in the dairy economy, right? We've been selling feed to dairies for the last 10 years. We have a strong relationship. And I think that helps us a lot in terms of -- and then I think the evidence is the number of dairies that we've signed up, and are continuing to engage with. So you got to have the source of the gas, number one. But the other thing we're trying to do is balance our offtake agreements, so that we're not putting all of our chips into one basket and then going to get real sad and disappointed when the price changes or things happen in the market that are undoubtedly going to happen as we progress into this in the next 5 to 10 years. So we're looking at really diversifying where we send our gas and how it's used. And then I think the open remaining question that is -- got an obvious answer to it. It's just not quite there yet is how electricity is going to play into this whole market. And I think we're contemplating that as well and without getting into any detail let's just say we're not keeping our -- we’re eye on the ball and on all the potential markets that will exist for renewable natural gas, as we progress for this. And I've had significant discussions with the California Air Resources Board and others. So we're trying to -- having been a destination ethanol plant for 10 years, we sort of know what it's like not to have very many options. And so what we're trying to do is sort of smash that model and give ourselves lots of options so that we reduce our risk across the business.

Next, we go to the line of Ed Woo with Ascendiant Capital.

As we just passed 100 days with the new President in the office, what do you see either in the green bill that he's proposing, as well as the stance that EPA has in terms of the ethanol waivers? How do you see that playing out in the next six months?

I would say that there's some very promising legislation of increasing the value of carbon credits from $50 under the 45Q, a provision to, in one case it’s $80, and another one I read was $125 per ton, very significant increase in the revenues that we could potentially get from carbon sequestration. The EPA has not only just thought but they've actually taken very significant action in favor of the biofuels industry. They filed an opposition to their own grant of three waivers. This is strange, but they went to the Supreme Court and they actually opposed their own grant of hardship waivers to three oil companies, and filed also a petition in support of the biofuels industry on something that went to Supreme Court just a couple of weeks ago. So the EPA has actually hit the ground running, the new secretary has promised that the renewable volume obligations which are sort of the blending rules, which had been delayed without getting published in the next few months. And so I think they're playing catch up a little bit, but they so far have been not only saying things but doing things that are very much in support of renewable fuels. The price of D3 RINs, which is cellulosic RINs generated by our biogas was about $0.80 in the third quarter of last year, and today it’s $3.20 per D3 RIN. So that's a very significant almost quadrupling of the Federal revenue reflecting that the offtakers, the obligated parties expect to actually have to blend the actual physical molecule or buy a RIN from somebody who is physically blending the molecule. This is what the Renewable Fuel Standard was designed to do, was to encourage some of the blend and other ones who didn't want to blend to be able to buy RINs. And that mechanism is now working. The price this morning for the D6 RIN, which was about $0.30 or so last year is $1.80. The D6 RIN is a corn ethanol RIN, again, supporting the value of blending ethanol. Because if you blend ethanol, you don't have to buy any RINs, you get the RIN for free. We give away RINs, 65 million of them every year to anybody that buys ethanol and blends it. So we're very well equipped to meet the market demand. But frankly, the EPA doesn't enforce any rules, there's not the market demand. I think the positive thing that the stock market has seen is that renewable fuels companies now are operating under a set of rules that are being enforced, and that's providing a balance in the market we haven’t had for a number of years.

And we take our last question or comments from the line of Marco Rodriguez with Stonegate Capital.

I was wondering if you could maybe spend a little bit of time on the capital structure here for Aemetis. You made some comments earlier in your prepared remarks were very helpful. But how are you kind of thinking about the -- you're at the market offering just kind of given the volatility in the stock price, and it looks like some of the more expensive debt, maturity date is extended, I guess you said it another year here to April '22. Just update us on your thoughts on how you're thinking about that?

Sure. In response to really long, long discussions with various Wall Street players we recognize the concern about the high interest rate bridge that, that we have. And we took steps in early 2021 to not completely replace that debt. I don't think it's necessary. We have about $300 million cost of our assets. So we reduced that debt down to a meaningful opportunity to refinance it at lower interest rates. So we are saving a substantial amount of money now by not having interest that's due, but frankly, the remaining higher interest bridge financing can now be refinanced with other tools. And I think that in the first quarter this year, we were above that refinance threshold. Now we're clearly within that refinance threshold. So we are, I think, executing on a moderate plan of debt reduction of high interest rate debt that I think over the next couple months, you'll see matures very nicely with what we would call low interest rate debt, something in this 8% to 10% range we would consider to be low interest rate debt. I think, though, that most people are not clear that our projects do not require a parent company debt financing. Our projects are standalone and when we put for example, the $30 million of equity funding into biogas, that allows us to do debt funding at the project company level, USDA Renewable Energy for America program, for example, has nothing to do with the parent company debt. We could have $1 billion of debt, the parent company would have no impact at all on our project company debt, because our subsidiary has no debt at all. The Aemetis Biogas subsidiary literally is a debt free entity, with $30 million of equity invested. So the same goes with our jet…

There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for closing remarks.

Thank you very much to the analysts who’ve joined us today as well as Aemetis shareholders and others. Please review the Aemetis corporate presentation that’s posted on the homepage of the Aemetis website. We look forward to talking with you about participating the growth opportunities at Aemetis.

Thank you for attending today's Aemetis earnings conference call. Please visit the Investors section of the Aemetis website where we will post a written version and audio version of this Aemetis earnings review and business update. Melinda?

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.