The White House Connection?

[Mr. Clean]

The man that Obama hired as his energy secretary, Steven Chu, is a noble prize winner. A scientist who understands the reality that corn based ethanol yields less energy than the carbon based input fuel that is used to make it. This represents an opportunity for a little cellulosic ethanol company ($ .70) called Verenium (VRNM). Verenium is a leader in cellulosic ethanol technology...the making of ethanol from waste and non-food crops through the use of specialized enzymes. When ethanol is made this way it has the potential to have a big dent on energy indpendence and gloabl warming.

Interestingly, Steven Chu has done work with Diversa, the predessesor company to Verenium. and is well aware of the potential of and need for cellulosic ethanol. This is fascinating stuff and a compelling opportunity. You owe it to yourself to do your own DD here:

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17193823/
www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?pr...
www.verenium.com/

The market hasn't yet made the connection between our you energy secretary, Verenium, and President Obama's promise to make us energy independent within 10 years.

Sirtuin Investor
sirtuininvestor.blogspot.com/2008...

[Mr. Clean]

Steven Chu New Secretary of Energy!
How Biology Will Help Fill Your Fuel Tank

- Alan Boyle, MSNBC, Feb. 18, 2007 www.msnbc.msn.com

'Digestive processes point the way to cheaper alternatives to gasoline'

San Francisco - Scientists looking for new enzymes to boost biofuel production and help America kick its addiction to imported oil say they have found hundreds of prospects in the unlikeliest of places: bug guts.

That's just one of the places where researchers are looking for ways to produce alternative fuels more efficiently and less expensively. Over the next decade or so, billions of dollars are expected to go into the development of new alternative-fuel technologies - a wave of research initiatives that some compare to World War II's Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb.

"I think there's a Manhattan Project going on," said Mel Simon, a research at the California Institute of Technology and the San Diego-based biotech company Diversa. "We may not just have noticed it."

Experts surveyed their progress on alternative-fuel development on Friday here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Unlike, say, commercial nuclear fusion - which is still decades down the road - the researchers said biofuels should make an impact on the energy economy within the next decade.

Nobel laureate Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said the need for alternatives to gasoline has become "very pressing" as the price of oil has risen. "Currently, transportation fuel is the most valuable form of energy we have," Chu said. The economics is such that powering automobiles with gasoline is now four times as expensive as powering them with plug-in electricity, he said.

As part of its initiative to reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next decade, the White House is asking for $179 million over the next year for biofuel research. Private investment is just as substantial: This month, the energy firm BP announced a $500 million, 10-year initiative to support biofuel development.

__________________________________________________________

Dr. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy
Dr. Steven Chu, distinguished scientist and co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics (1997), was appointed by President Obama as the 12th Secretary of Energy and sworn into office on January 21, 2009.