Toward Success in Biomass Conversion to Affordable Clean Energy: The Story of KiOR and the Merits and Perils of Developing Economically and Environmentally Sustainable Biofuels to Chase Down Global Warming and Limit Destructive Climate Change

Toward Success in Biomass Conversion to Affordable Clean Energy highlights the history of KiOR, a startup bioenergy company that sought to become a commercial success … but failed.

Starting in 2007, until declaring bankruptcy in 2014, KiOR spent close to $1 billion to prove that single-reactor thermocatalytic conversion of organic materials such as wood chips, grasses, and even waste plastics to transportation fuels using conventional oil-refinery catalyst processing is not scalable to comm...