In the current economic and political climate, there has been enormous attention focused on the need to develop sustainable and renewable sources of transportation fuel.  Ethanol has a significant and growing role in this development, providing a cleaner, domestically-produced, renewable energy solution. 

However, the current generation of ethanol production in the U.S. utilizes corn and other edible feedstocks. Mascoma is committed to developing sustainable, viable, next generation ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks.

Mascoma’s industry leading R&D team is focused on developing biofuels from non-food biomass wood, straws, fuel energy crops, paper pulp and other agricultural waste products.  Processing ethanol from cellulosic biomass minimizes the environmental impact of fuel ethanol production. 

In nature, no organism is capable of quickly and cost-effectively producing and fermenting sugars from cellulosic biomass. Mascoma’s research laboratories are now developing a new generation of microbes and processes for economical conversion of cellulosic feedstocks into ethanol.  

Mascoma’s organisms and processes are designed to:

• Rapidly break down the components of biomass
• Convert a range of sugars and polymers of sugars to ethanol
• Thrive in a manufacturing environment