Venture capitalists (including Vinod Khosla) fund new cellulosic ethanol plant.

[JohnWxy]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/13/business/13ethanol.html

The Mascoma Corporation, which is trying to produce ethanol from nontraditional sources, plans to announce today that it has received $30 million in financing from a group of prominent venture capital investors.
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Mascoma, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., plans to use some of the funds to begin building a pilot plant and eventually a commercial processor to produce cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from grass, wood or various agricultural or forestry waste products.
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"I think we will have a pilot plant in the ground in 2007, and we expect we will have a commercial plant in 2008,” said Samir Kaul, a general partner at Khosla Ventures and a Mascoma board member.

Venture capitalists invested more than $635 million in clean energy technologies through the third quarter of this year, far surpassing the $195 million they invested in all of 2005, according to the National Venture Capital Association.