Non-food biofuels. If Johnson Matthey or KiOR gets to the mentioned $2.60 per gallon target price, industrial scale, that firm may become a household name. Under an NREL grant, Johnson Matthey might in coming years build and operate an industrial scale pilot project. If the grant allows intellectual property rights to stay with the firm, company shares would benefit more than if NREL requires government ownership. If the thing hits a home run. Neither firm nor feds would treasure being assigned credit for a strike out.

Initial link notice was found here.

These are follow-up links: NREL here, Wikipedia on the firm, Johnson Matthey homepage, investor relations here, British.

The first link mentions "KiOR," this google. This touting link. Including mention of a $2.62 per gallon potential technology. Or at least having that figure as a target to be competitive with existing fuel options, under present pricing and costs.

UPDATE: The NREL news release quotes Mark Nimros, Chief Scientist of NREL molecular biomass science initiatives. Googling the name, technological info was found in NREL pages, see, e.g., here and here. I give the links, admitting I have not yet delved beyond that into reading of and understanding NREL biomass-derived fuel science. Use the links if interested, and you start as novice as I am on the potentials and pitfalls, at this point.

If any reader discovers any link giving further useful detail of non-food biomass chemistry and catalytic methods and intentions, and bench scale outcomes, please post the link in a comment. There is a vast literature, but nobody is pumping out millions of gallons of competitive fuels at unsubsidized pricing, at present. And the ethanol plants are having their problems. Corn crops this year were impacted by drought.