Title: Mascoma: Seeking a Market Toehold - Technology Review

Industry sector: Biofuels

Mascoma: Seeking a Market Toehold

By Nidhi Subbaraman

When the biofuels startup Mascoma launched in 2005, it hoped to capitalize on technology that would produce ethanol from wood chips and other plant waste in an efficient one-step process.

Mascoma secured $30 million in financing by 2006 and began building a 200,000-gallon-per-year pilot plant in Rome, NY, the following year. In 2008, the company heralded new research advances toward genetically engineered bacteria that could thrive at high temperatures. Using them made it possible to reduce by 60 percent the quantity of costly enzymes needed to degrade cellulose into fermentable sugars. The company announced plans to build one of the first commercial-scale cellulosic-ethanol plants, in Kinross, MI; it would be able to produce 80 million gallons per year.

But as of the summer of 2010, ­Mascoma had yet to begin construction. Simply put, nobody would lend it the money for a production plant whose product would compete with relatively cheap oil. "The bottom line is, these are high-risk, first-of-kind plants," says Mike Cleary, director of the National Bioenergy Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. "Getting banks to loan them money is hard."

Read the full article at Technology Review.