Results for: “evaluating kior”

In a recent column on the metric of “success” in Cleantech, I wrote that the measure of success that will matter to most people is whether the company sells energy at an affordable price: I simply don’t think that the fact that one can talk up a company and then IPO it at a profit is the proper metric for success. Some of those companies that have been IPO’d are grossly overvalued. Many of them won’t be around for long. (In fact, I wrestled hard this week with a decision to short one of them; I ultimately decided not to — but not because I don’t think the company is grossly overvalued). So is a company that is IPO’d, makes… Continue»

Cracking Biomass Back when I worked in a refinery, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about how biomass would behave in certain refining processes. A fluidized catalytic cracker (FCC), for instance, takes oil and subjects it to heat and a catalyst to fracture larger hydrocarbons into smaller ones that can serve as gasoline blending feedstock (among other things). Another refining unit is a delayed coker. Very heavy oil is subjected to even higher temperatures than in the cracker, and once again the hydrocarbon chains are cracked into smaller molecules useful for further processing into gasoline and diesel. Petroleum coke, similar in appearance to coal, is also produced. Given the extreme conditions of these units, either of them… Continue»

Some people think I am anti-ethanol. That is an oversimplification, and a misrepresentation of my position. I have nothing against ethanol as a fuel. It isn’t as good a fuel as butanol, but then again we can’t make butanol as efficiently as we make ethanol. My objection is with specific ethanol policies in the U.S., which I think are setting up some potentially risky scenarios and making a lot of unrealistic promises. Imagine that we have a drought in the Midwest that causes corn crops to fail, sending food and ethanol prices soaring at the same time. Such an event would surely have us reevaluating U.S. ethanol policies. I also dislike the incredible hype associated with cellulosic ethanol. Promising too… Continue»