Khosla Ventures

KIOR, Inc., the Pasadena, Texas-based cellulosic fuels company that filed its IPO prospectus in April 2011, said Thursday it has priced its offering at $15 per share and will offer 10 million shares to the public and another 1.5 million shares to its underwriters as over-allotment options -- bringing the total proceeds to $172.5 million.

Kior, Inc., which began construction in Q1 2011 on a $190-million commercial-scale plant to convert Southern Yellow Pine chips into renewable crude oil and diesel, has filed a $100 milion Initial Public Offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Kior, based in Pasadena, Texas, is 74.5% owned by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Khosla Ventures. 

Until recently, it has been difficult to see how or when advanced biofuels would reach customers. Here are two companies whose go-to-market strategies have made notable progress in the past few months: Gevo, Inc. (NASDAQ: GEVO) & Amyris Inc. (NASDAQ: AMRS).

Shares of biofuels and renewable chemicals company Gevo, Inc. (GEVO) are steady in mid-session trading today after rising 9.6 percent to close Wednesday at $16.44 for the company’s first day of trading on NASDAQ. On Tuesday, the company’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) raised $107.25 million with the sale of 7.15 million shares at $15 each.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Thursday announced a total of more than $410 million in financing incentives for three large cellulosic ethanol projects and for small producers in 33 states. 

In a separate announcement Thursday, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) offered a loan guarantee of $241 million to finance a renewable diesel plant.

It is pretty clear that the economic viability of wind and solar energy and the extent to which they will contribute significant power to the grid depends on being able to generate electricity intermittently -- when the sun shines and the wind blows -- and store it for use when it needed and/or when the sun is not shining nor the wind blowing.

Although the Obama Administration and many environmental organizations are diametrically opposed on the potential of “clean coal” and carbon capture and storage (CCS), venture capitalists are funding companies with a range of CCS technologies. 

Here are four venture-funded companies at the leading edge of “clean coal”: Calera Corporation, Novomer Inc., Akermin, Inc., and GreatPoint Energy.

EnergyBoom’s E•B Biofuel subindex decline of 0.99 percent last week was the best performance among the EnergyBoom clean sector indices. It also beat the leading green ETFs  and all broad market indices except the Dax Index of 30 bluechips trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, which slipped 0.24 percent. 

Ecomotors claims MPG efficiency superior to Toyota Prius from its opposed piston opoc™ engine architecture

While the big publicly traded wind power companies are chasing the “bigger” wind turbine strategy, a few small private companies are pursuing the “better” wind turbine technology that will be needed if the industry is to meet the U.S.