How to bring biofuels to market? (San Francisco)

While scientists already know how to turn renewable matter into transportation fuels, no company has yet cracked the code to producing those fuels from stuff we don’t eat, at a cost that can compete with the stuff that powers our cars and trucks today.

The Bay Area is home to six biofuels startups that together have raised more than $417 million in private investment and federal grants, each with their own unique science and strategy, to produce fuels from sugar, wheat grass, algae and fish, not to mention any number of other flora or fauna.

The prize for those who can find the right formula and produce it at scale, at a cost that can compete with fossil fuels? The trillion-dollar fuels market.

And while many entrepreneurs and investors will say that a market so large can comfortably accommodate biofuels made any number of ways, there is no question that there will be major advantages for the companies that get their fuels to market first — or at all.

“The road to commercialization is long, it’s expensive and it’s very challenging,” said Jonathan Wolfson, CEO of algae fuel company Solazyme Inc., based in South San Francisco. “But there will be more than one company that runs that gantlet. From my perspective, it’s about determining what the real measurable steps on that path are, and demonstrating you’ll meet them.”

Read the full story in the San Francisco Business Times.