Ethanol got a big plug this week in President Bush's State of the Union address as a major stepping stone on the road to an alternative energy future. Ethanol production last year hit a record 4.9 billion gallons, and production facilities now being constructed should mean up to 6 billions gallons of capacity by the middle of 2009.
Today's ethanol comes largely from corn. But researchers and investors are looking ahead to a second generation of the fossil fuel alternative called cellulosic ethanol--or more casually perhaps, "ethanol 2.0"--that comes from other plant sources. One company that's brewing up ethanol options is Cambridge, Mass.-based Mascoma. Pictured here is John Bardsley, a Mascoma research associate in the fermentation group, working in the company's R&D labs in Hanover, N.H.
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