Greentech Media

When well-known Dartmouth biofuel researcher Lee Lynd backs a technology, it automatically wins respect. Mascoma is no exception. Sun Microsystems co-founder cum greentech venture capitalist Vinod Khosla convinced Lynd and his team to take $4 million from Khosla Ventures and Flagship Capital to help spin his cellulosic-ethanol research into the new company. (Lynd became the chief scientific officer.)

The company won further validation when it raised another $35 million in two rounds from top greentech VCs this year, then received a $4.9-million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and a $14.8-million grant from New York government agencies.

What's so attractive about Mascoma? It's making ethanol from wood chips and other nonagricultural crops instead of corn. That approach could quiet some of the criticism surrounding ethanol; namely, that the fuel's growth is severely limited unless it taps into the crops needed for food.

Of course, Mascoma is in a race with a number of other cellulosic champions, including Woodland Biofuels, Abenoga, Blue Fire Ethanol, Range Fuels, Catalyst Renewables, Poet, SunOpta, Verenium and GreenField Ethanol. And cellulosic ethanol has been in development for years without reaching large production numbers. But we feel Mascoma's approach is promising enough to justify taking a risk.

Using a bioengineered organism, the company thinks it has found a way to reduce the current cellulosic-ethanol process - producing enzymes, using those enzymes to break down cellulosic material into usable sugars and then converting the sugars into ethanol - into a single step. If it works, the technology should drastically cut costs. Mascoma is presently building a production facility in Michigan and has partnered with Tamarak Energy to build facilities in New York and New England.