EPA Still Betting on Cello Energy to Meet Next-Gen Biofuel Target
by Josie Garthwaite (Earth2Tech) Cello Energy, a startup run by Alabama’s former ethics chairman and backed by Khosla Ventures that has been beset by production delays and fraud allegations, still ranks among the companies that the Environmental Protection Agency believes is most likely to help meet federal targets for cellulosic biofuel production in 2011.
According to the EPA’s latest proposal for the 2011 Renewable Fuels Standard (a rulemaking for what percentage of transportation fuels has to be made up of biofuels in 2011), the agency expects Cello Energy’s plant in Bay Minette, Ala. to contribute up to 5 million gallons (8.5 million ethanol-equivalent gallons) of cellulosic diesel. That works out to up to a third of the total 25.5 million ethanol-equivalent gallons of cellulosic biofuel that the EPA sees as the upper bound of what could be produced in 2011. READ MORE



