GigaOM » Coskata

Biofuel maker ZeaChem lines up $232M loan award from USDA

Ucilia Wang — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:00:36 +0000

The long-promised but perpetually fledging biofuel industry still remains a big focus of government support. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday that it has made a conditional commitment for a $232.5 million loan guarantee to ZeaChem to build the company’s first commercial-scale refinery to turn plants into fuels and other chemical products.

This is the same USDA program loan guarantee program that delivered a loan guarantee to now-defunct biofuel maker Range Fuels. To date, none of the next-gen biofuel companies have produced advanced biofuels at any commercial scale, despite hundreds of millions of funding in venture capital and government funds.

The loan guarantee will enable ZeaChem to build a plant in Boardman, Ore., which could produce 25 million gallons per year of products. At least 51 percent of the plant’s production will be cellulosic biofuel (including ethanol), and the rest will be chemicals such as acetic acid and ethyl acetate, the USDA said. The total cost of the project is around $390.5 million, the USDA added.

With the guarantee, the government promises to pay back the loan if ZeaChem isn’t able to. Silicon Valley Bank will arrange the loan, said ZeaChem CEO Jim Imbler during a conference call. The rest of the project cost will be equity coming from “a variety of sources,” but Imbler declined to divulge more details.

ZeaChem will have to meet certain performance goals before the USDA will complete the loan guarantee package, Imbler said. The company will work on meeting them starting this year through a demonstration plant located next to the site for the proposed commercial refinery. ZeaChem announced the completion of the demonstration plant earlier this month, and the plant will make acetic acid and ethyl acetate. ZeaChem also plans to produce cellulosic ethanol at this demonstration plant later this year.

Colorado-based ZeaChem is among the many companies that have been trying to move into commercial production of their advanced biofuel technologies. Problems with technology development and lining up financing have been two big stumbling blocks. Range Fuels shut its refinery in Georgia last year after building it only the year before, and that plant went to another biofuel developer, LanzaTech, in a liquidation sale earlier this month.

Companies such as KiOR and Coskata have sought funding through initial public offerings though they both have yet to reach mass production. KiOR went public last year while Coskata filed for an IPO last December but hasn’t made its public market debut (here is an in-depth look at KiOR’s IPO and why its pre-IPO investors are still waiting for the big payday).

The USDA says ZeaChem’s biorefinery in Oregon will be open for business by late 2014. The company raised a $19 million round from private investors last year. About 30 percent of the feedstock for the refinery will be agricultural waste such as wheat straw and corn stover, while the remainder will be woody biomass from a nearby poplar farm called the GreenWood Tree Farm Fund.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Despite struggles, next-gen biofuels continue to find funding

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:00:31 +0000

Updated: Next-gen biofuels in the U.S. have failed to produce much at commercial scale, despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the government and private investors. I was reminded of this unfortunate fact by two articles that came out last week, one in Scientific American, The False Promise of Biofuels, and the other, a post by blogger and biofuel exec Robert Rapier, How to Fix the Broken Cellulosic Ethanol Incentive System.

However, despite the lack of results, next-gen biofuel companies continue to receive a significant amount of both government and investor support. At what point will the funding transform into advanced biofuels being produced at scale and fueling our vehicles?

Biofuel funding still flowing

Last Friday, Spanish engineering giant Abengoa said its biofuel arm, Abengoa Bioenergy, has received a conditional commitment for a $133.9 million federal loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to build a cellulosic ethanol plant. The loan, backed by the DOE’s guarantee, will come from the Federal Financing Bank, and Abengoa Bioenergy says now that it has the guarantee, it will start building the plant in Stephens County, Kan., “in the very near future.”

Other recent biofuel recipients of the loan guarantee program include cellulosic ethanol startup Coskata, waste-to-energy company Enerkem, Diamond Green Diesel, a joint venture from oil giant Valero and Darling International, and corn ethanol company Poet. The USDA also recently offered a $75 million loan guarantee to INEOS Bio and its partner New Planet Energy to build an advanced biofuel plant near Vero Beach, Fla. (Update: Diamond Green Diesel later found its own funding and didn’t accept the DOE loan guarantee deal).

Private investors continue to back these companies, too. Coskata announced on Friday the first close of its Series D round, and investors included The Blackstone Group, Khosla Ventures, Total’s investing arm, ATV, Globespan Capital Partners, General Motors, Arancia, and Sumitomo. Earlier this year, biofuel maker KiOR decided to put its loan guarantee application on hold and said it was confident that in 2012, it would be able to find loan terms at least comparable to those offered by the DOE.

Flawed subsidies

But next-gen biofuel subsidy programs haven’t seemed to have worked, and I am skeptical that the loan guarantee program will make much of a dent in helping these next-gen biofuels reach commercial scale. The Renewable Fuel Standard, maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency, has certainly failed to live up to expectations.

Every year for the past couple of years, the EPA has had to readjust the estimated volumes of cellulosic biofuels produced. Originally in 2010, the EPA estimated the industry could produce 100 million gallons, but basically it turned out to be zero. For 2011, five companies were estimated to be able to produce about 6 million cellulosic ethanol-equivalent gallons and it’s unclear if they are going to make that estimate.

For 2012, the EPA previously estimated that the cellulosic ethanol industry would have a capacity to able to produce 500 million gallons. But in June the EPA quietly proposed to reduce that volume estimate to 3.5 million to 15.7 million. The EPA counts DuPont Danisco, Fiberight, Fulcrum Bioenergy, INEOS Bio, KiOR, KL Energy, Terrabon and ZeaChem as companies that will be able to produce small volumes of cellulosic biofuel in 2012. The EPA thinks that by 2012, “advanced biofuels” will only make up 1.21 percent of the fuel supply, and cellulosic biofuels will make up as little as .002 percent of the fuel supply.

Is the system able to be fixed (or worth fixing)?

While next-gen biofuels have stalled, corn ethanol has morphed into a massive, albeit unsustainable business, thanks to the federal government’s 10 percent fuel mandate. According to Scientific American, corn ethanol produced 13 billion gallons in 2010, and received subsidies north of $5.68 billion that year. Corn ethanol also contributes to global riding food prices, and is a naturally inefficient way to produce energy (particularly compared to sugar cane ethanol).

While next-gen biofuels and cellulosic ethanol are supposed to be far more sustainable, they have struggled to get their costs down. The Scientific American article notes:

Breakthroughs remain possible, and the scientific quest for a better biofuel continues, but investors and politicians might be wise not to stake much money or policy on a high-risk bet.

Robert Rapier offers up a more concrete suggestion to fix the system: Instead of the renewable fuel standard and loan guarantees, why not offer a direct per gallon subsidy for product that is sold. That way companies could receive government support for a product they can (and are) producing, not for the hope that one day they can produce it.

What do you think?

Images courtesy of Amyris, Dogpath Biofuels, KiOR, and GigaOM.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Biofuel Startup KiOR Seeks to Raise up to $100M in IPO

Jeff St. John — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 04:05:50 +0000

Biocrude startup KiOR filed to raise up to $100 million in an IPO on Monday, becoming the latest Khosla Ventures-backed biofuel company to seek the support of the public markets. It also laid out how its biomass-to-crude oil substitute process — unusual in an industry that has concentrated on producing ethanol or biodiesel — can compete on costs and logistics with the oil industry at large.

Indeed, KiOR says in its S-1 that it’s shooting for an unsubsidized production cost below $1.80 per gallon of gasoline or diesel for its wood chips-to-biocrude technology. That’s cheaper than competing technologies seeking to turn non-food feedstocks like straw, grass and wood chips into ethanol or biodiesel.

The catch is, that price is expected to come from a facility that could take 1,500 tons of feedstock per day. But the Lyle, Texas-based startup is only running a 10 tons-per-day demonstration plant right now, so it will need to scale up to prove those figures.

To get there, the startup will use any raised funds to build up to five plants, the first to be built in Columbus, Miss., and has lined up Hunt Refining Co. as a buyer of the bio-crude it hopes to produce from that plant.

KiOR is also seeking a $1 billion Department of Energy loan guarantee, and received a term sheet for the guarantee in early February. That’s a huge amount for a single company to request, compared to the $571 million in loan guarantees the DOE gave to biofuel companies Coskata, Enerkem and Diamond Green Diesel in February, and the $75 million to INEOS Bio and its partner New Planet Energy in January. Companies need to match the funding with private equity, and KiOR is going to need a lot more financial backing to land that loan guarantee.

The state of Mississippi said in August it would loan KiOR $75 million to help it build five biofuel plants in the state, and KiOR was reported to expect to invest some $500 million into those projects at the time. KiOR’s S-1 puts the expected cost of its first plant in Columbus at $190 million.

KiOR was spun out of a company called BIOeCON as a joint venture with Khosla Ventures in 2007, and Khosla provided the company’s $1.4 million Series A round. KiOR later on raised $40 million as part of a planned $95 million Series B round of funding. KiOR’s S-1 listed Credit Suisse, UBS and Goldman Sachs as underwriters.

The IPO market for biofuel companies should give KiOR’s investors some confidence. Next-generation biofuel and biotechnology company Amyris has seen its share price perform well since its August debut, even as it admits it won’t be making its own biofuel for at least a year. And fellow Khosla-backed biofuel company Gevo raised $95.7 million in its February IPO, and has seen its shares climb from $15 to close at $24.45 on Monday.

KiOR won’t be the only biofuel company investors will be keeping an eye on; algae biofuel startup Solazyme announced its IPO plans in March, seeking to raise $100 million.

Image courtesy of Rick Hurdle via Creative Commons license.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Next-Gen Biofuel Cheat Sheet: Where Are They Now?

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:00:07 +0000

Over three years ago I put together this charticle on 10 of Khosla Venture’s biofuel bets. Given a couple of these companies have gone public, been sold off, or have stalled, I decided to take a look back at the bulk of these firms and update this cheat sheet with what I know of their recent status.

Company	Founded	Technology	Investors	Where are they now?
Gevo	2005	Gevo retrofits ethanol plants to produce isobutanol using biocatalysts and fermentation	Khosla Ventures, Virgin Green Funds, Total Energy Ventures International, Burrill, and Malaysian Capital	Gevo went public this week, raising $95.7 million after offering expenses. The company wont be producing isobutanol until mid 2012, and generates any revenue to date from selling ethanol.
Range Fuels	2004 as Kergy	The company uses heat and steam to convert biomass into syngas, which is then processed into alcohols that can be separated and refined to produce different types of biofuels.	Khosla Ventures, Passport Capital, BlueMountain, Leaf Clean Energy Company and Pacific Capital Group (with participation by the CalPERs), as well as an $80 million loan guarantee from the USDA, and a $76 million grant from the DOE	Range Fuels broke ground on its Georgia plant in 2007, started producing methanol first and then small amounts of cellulosic ethanol, but earlier this year laid off workers and is reportedly shuttering its plant soon.
Coskata	2006	Coskata uses a hybrid of thermochemical and biological steps, gasifying the feedgas to syngas and using bacteria to make ethanol	Khosla Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures, Great Point Ventures, GM	Coskata came out of stealth in 2008, and then stalled in the mid-2009 financing crunch. But recently Coskata was awarded a $250 million loan guarantee from the USDA.
Amyris	2003	Amyris genetically modifies microorganisms, primarily yeast, and uses them as living factories to convert plant-sourced sugars into target molecules, including biofuel.	Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, and French oil giant Total.	The company went public in April 2010, plans to produce biofuel commercially this year, and is trading at over $30 per share.
Cilion	2006	The plan was to convert corn into ethanol to power cars and trucks more cheaply and more sustainably than traditional corn ethanol.	Khosla Ventures, Western Milling, Virgin Fuels, Ron Burkle, The Yucaipa Companies	The last trace I can find of Cilion is that its plant was reportedly idle in late 2009, and was being restarted by AE Biofuels in 2010.
Mascoma	2006	Producer of biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass using microorganisms and enzymes.	Valero, Khosla Ventures, Flagship Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Vantage Point Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, Pinnacle Ventures.	Mascoma’s delayed its commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant, but last month received $50 million from oil refiner Valero to build the plant, plus an equity investment, and an off take agreement.
LS9	2005	Developed a genetically modified version of e.coli bacteria to make diesel.	BlackRock, Khosla Ventures, Flagship Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners	LS9 raised a round of funding in Dec. 2010, which it says will go towards fulfilling deals with partners Procter and Gamble and building out its demonstration facility in Florida
AltraBiofuels	2004	Leveraged various kinds of biofuel manufacturing processes.	Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Angeleno Group, Omninet Private Equity, Sage Capital Partners	AltraBiofuels spun out a new company called EdeniQ in mid-2008, and later that year reportedly closed its plants. EdeniQ has more recently raised funds from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the Westly Group, Kleiner, Morgan Stanley, Advanced Equities, and others.
Verenium	1994 as Diversa	Produces enzyme based cellulosic ethanol.	Khosla Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures, Charles River, Rho Ventures	Diversa, which went public in 2000, bought Celunol for $150M, and rebranded as Verenium in 2007. In mid-2010 BP bought up Verenium’s cellulosic ethanol business for $98.3 million.
KiOR	2007, spun out of BIOeCON	Uses a catalyst originally developed to help the oil industry break down heavy crude oil and uses it to aid the process of pyrolysis, or super-heating organic matter in the absence of oxygen to break it down into a substitute for crude oil.	Khosla Ventures	KiOR raised $110 million last year and received a term sheet for a $1 billion loan guarantee from the DOE.

Image courtesy of NREL.

Related Content From GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

A New Path For Waste Management: Trash-to-Chemicals

Ucilia Wang — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:21:45 +0000

Trash king Waste Management will soon have new use for its waste: chemicals, courtesy of a new development partnership with green chemistry company Genomatica. The move is Waste Management’s latest, as it looks to expand the applications that can be made out of the municipal waste it collects, from biofuels to fertilizers to biogas.

Genomatica, based in San Diego, will engineer the organisms that will convert synthesis gas (syngas) produced from the trash into chemical compounds. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal.

Genomatica’s researchers will make use of the patent secured last year to engineer organisms, such as E. coli, so that they can work with syngas, said Mark Burk, CTO of Genomatica. Burk declined to say what other organisms are under consideration by his team for the syngas conversion process.

Syngas can be made from a variety of sources, including natural gas, coal and biomass, and turned into electricity, fuels and other chemical compounds. Many companies are trying to produce ethanol using syngas made from renewable sources, such as wood chips, plants and trash. “Syngas is one of the most flexible and versatile feedstock from a wide range of materials – any organic matter can be gasified,” Burk said.

Genomatica, founded in 2000, already is using engineered E. coli to convert sugar into a chemical (1,4-butanediol, or BDO) that has been used to make spandex, running shoes and plastic auto parts. Genomatica has been running a pilot production of BDO in Michigan since last summer. The pilot facility can produce 3,000 liters of BDO, and the company plans to expand that to 10,000 liters this year, Burk said.

The company hasn’t announced customers yet for its BDO product and has taken 2.5 years to move from initial development to pilot. Genomatica has raised $40 million in venture capital from firm such as Alloy Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mohr Davidow Ventures.

There are basically two main ways to turn syngas into fuel or chemical additives: chemical catalysts, or organisms. Genomatica’s perspective is that chemical catalysts can lead to a more energy-intensive processes, and using organisms can be cheaper, less energy intensive, and can yield more chemical products. Other companies that are using organisms to convert syngas into products include Coskata and INEOS Bio, but Coskata and INEOS Bio are using naturally occurring organisms whereas Genomatica is developing engineered ones.

Waste Management has been actively lining up partners like Genomatica over the past year, and invested in trash to biofuel company Enerkem and will also provide trash to Fulcrum BioEnergy. Here’s a detailed look at Waste Management’s investment and innovation strategy.

Related Content From GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Photo courtesy of Genomatica

Fulcrum Raises $75M, Inches Toward First Waste-to-Fuel Plant

Ucilia Wang — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:10:03 +0000

Trash-to-fuel technology could be the quiet front-runner in the next-generation of biofuels. Fulcrum BioEnergy, for one, is paving its way to reaching that goal: the company said Tuesday it has lined up $75 million and plans to start building its first commercial refinery this summer.

The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company said the funding is the final equity financing it needs to start building a $120 million processing plant, called Sierra BioFuels Plant, just outside of Reno in Nevada. Fulrum vice president of administration Rick Barraza declined to disclose the investors in the round. Not all $75 million will be used to build the plant; some will be used for day-to-day corporate operations.

The company is still waiting for a loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, however. Fulcrum expects to complete negotiations of the loan guarantee in the next few months, said Barraza.

The DOE recently announced its first biofuel loan guarantee offer, and that $241 million guarantee went to Diamond Green Diesel. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), meanwhile, announced three loan guarantees recently totaling $405 million to three biofuel producers, including trash-to-fuel maker Enerkem.

Fulcrum says it expects to complete construction of its plant, which will have the capacity to produce 10.5 million gallons of ethanol per year, in late 2012. The company says the plant will also be equipped to make propanol, a solvent commonly used in the plastics industry, and Fulcrum plans to produce 16 MW of electricity onsite to run its operation.

We should pause here and note that Fulcrum’s deadline for completing its plant is rather aggressive, particularly if it’s factoring in a swift awarding of a DOE loan guarantee into the timeline. We’ve seen enough missed deadlines by numerous next-gen biofuel makers that have struggled with technical problems and raising money. When I first spoke with Fulcrum in the summer of 2008, the company had bullishly predicted that it would start building the Sierra BioFuels plant that same year.

When it does get built, the plant will operate by turning garbage into ethanol using a gasification process that bakes shredded pieces of trash at high temperatures to produce synthesis gas. The syngas then goes through a purification process to get rid of particles before going through a catalytic process to convert the gas into ethanol.

Fulcrum has licensed the gasification technology from InEnTech, and is using a catalyst that was jointly developed by Nipawin Biomass Ethanol New Generation Co-operative and Saskatchewan Research Council in Canada. Syngas will run through the catalyst that turns the carbon molecules from the syngas into fuel.Earlier this month, Fulcrum said it had signed a 15-year agreement with Waste Management of Nevada to buy municipal trash for the refinery.

Will Fulcrum turn out to be just another next-gen biofuel maker that lines up deadlines, only to struggle to reach commercialization? Startup Range Fuels managed to get private equity and federal financial aid to build its first commercial plant last year, but it’s still not mass producing ethanol. In fact, the company confirmed earlier this month that it was laying off workers, and its technical adviser (and founder), Bud Klepper, told Georgia Public Broadcasting that the company was shutting down its plan to tackle technical issues and find more money.

For more research related to smart grid check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Image courtesy of Fulcrum BioEnergy

Feds Promise $571 Million in Biofuel Loan Guarantees

Ucilia Wang — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:31:07 +0000

Biofuel production nationwide has been woefully behind schedule as would-be producers struggle to just get their first commercial plants rolling. The U.S. government wants to help, and on Thursday, announced loan guarantee commitments totaling $571 million for cellulosic ethanol startup Coskata, waste-to-energy company Enerkem and Diamond Green Diesel, a joint venture from oil giant Valero and Darling International.

Coskata has gotten a letter of intent from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a $250 million loan guarantee to build a plant to make ethanol from woody biomass. The plant will have the capacity to make 55 million gallons per year. Coskata’s plant plans seriously stalled during the recession, and Coskata has been waiting for this loan guarantee to come through. The company is well-known for touting a $1 per gallon production price and its backers including Khosla Ventures, General Motors, and Advanced Technology Ventures.

The USDA also awarded Enerkem a conditional commitment for an $80 million loan guarantee to build a 10 million-gallon-per-year refinery for making ethanol out of municipal solid waste. Enerkem, which uses a thermochemical trash-to-syngas process, was already awarded a $50 million Department of Energy grant, and also raised funding from trash giant Waste Management, Cycle Capital, Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and BDR Capital.

At the same time, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding a $241 million loan guarantee — its first for a biofuel plant — to Diamond Green Diesel. The guarantee will help Valero build a plant in Louisiana that will make 137 million gallons of biofuel per year primarily from animal fats and used cooking oil.

The USDA said it’s not done doling out financial help to biofuel producers. It plans to announce new rules “soon” that will make more money available from the loan guarantee program, which originated from a 2008 Farm Bill.

Lining up money to build refineries has been a huge hurdle for a slew of biofuel companies in the past two years. The recession is only partly to blame. Many of these companies have encountered technical problems for converting plants and wastes into fuel. Investors once flocked to these startup companies, especially when the federal government announced goals to gradually increase the nation’s supply of renewable fuel until it hits 36 billion in 2022.

Well, hitting the goals has proven a lot more difficult. Congress initially set 100 million gallons as the 2010 target for cellulosic biofuel, but the Environmental Protection Agency cut that to 6.5 million gallons. It appears the industry might have produced less than 1 million gallons last year, reported ClimateWire, citing an estimate by a government analyst.

Just last week, reports emerged that Range Fuels, backed by venture capital firms such as Khosla Ventures, was laying off workers and shutting down its refinery in Georgia in order to tackle technical problems and raise more money. Colorado-based Range Fuels received an $80 million loan guarantee from the USDA to help fund its refinery, which began production by making methanol instead of ethanol last year.

Perhaps the USDA will see quicker success from its latest bets. Aside from Coskata and Enerkem, the agency also touted a loan guarantee conditional commitment for a $75 million loan guarantee to INEOS Bio and its partner New Planet Energy, which it first announced a few weeks ago.

INEOS Bio (which is the biofuel arm of petrochemical giant INEOS) and developer New Planet Energy say they will use the loan guarantee to build the “INEOS BioEnergy Center,” near Vero Beach, Florida, that will produce 8 million gallons of advanced biofuels and 6 MW of biomass power from plant waste and trash per year. The companies say the center will begin producing biofuels and bioenergy in 2012, and will create 175 jobs during the construction process and 50 jobs when the center is completed.

Loan guarantees are important awards for companies looking to build plants for these next-gen biofuel projects. A loan guarantee essentially is a promise by the government to back a loan if the company can’t pay it, and it enables companies to finance projects with a better interest rate and at a lower cost.

For more research, check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Apple’s New North Carolina Data Center Ready to Roll

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:10:18 +0000

Apple’s $1 billion data center in North Carolina made headlines when the project was revealed in May 2009. New reports indicate that the facility is set to open for business “any day now,” according to local officials talking to Data Center Knowledge. It also looks like additional construction might double the facility’s size, as recent rumors had suggested. But what is the size increase for?

The report assures readers that the data center, located in Maiden, a town of about 4,000 residents, is ready to “ramp up production.” The 500,000 square foot facility won’t actually be producing anything, but will instead operate as a server farm. The specific purpose of those servers isn’t yet known. During Apple’s recent conference call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said only that the data center was on schedule, with an expected completion (and usage) date of late 2010.

Apple’s plans for the facility must indeed be big, since aerial footage (see video below) seems to confirm the recent Digital Daily assertion that Apple was indeed thinking about doubling the size of the center, adding another 500,000 square feet to its already considerable footprint.

The site will be at least five times the size of Apple’s largest current server facility, located in Newark, California. Size alone suggests more than just an evolutionary upgrade in Apple’s server capacity. So why the sudden, massive capacity increase?

Apple TV: Well, most obviously, Apple just announced that it sold 250,000 Apple TVs in that device’s first three months on market. Since the new Apple TV is a streaming only product, offering on demand streams of video, that should translate into a much greater strain on Apple’s servers. But reports seem to indicate that iTunes rental service streaming to Apple TV has been largely without issue to date, which would suggest that capacity isn’t an issue yet. Taken alone, the Apple TV’s streaming demands can’t account for the need for a new data center this big, even if Apple had massively undersold its own expectations for the device, which doesn’t appear to be the case.

MobileMe: Apple also has MobileMe, its own cloud-based services including email, contact, bookmark and note syncing, and virtual cloud storage. The service allows subscribers to keep their information up-to-date and synchronized across multiple Macs and iOS devices. I doubt the MobileMe subscriber base is expanding exponentially, or we would’ve heard about it at the conference call, but there is another possibility: Apple is planning to open up the service to all Apple device owners. If Apple introduced a tiered system, with limited access for free users, it would be a huge incentive for prospective hardware buyers.

iTunes in the Cloud: Finally, there’s the old chestnut of Apple’s plans to bring iTunes to the cloud. A streaming music subscription service has often been rumored, but hasn’t yet materialized. Maybe Apple was simply lacking the infrastructure, and didn’t want to launch a service before quality could be assured.

Whatever the case with music, media streaming and cloud services seem to be written in stone for the future of computing, so Apple’s North Carolina data center, even at one million square feet, makes a lot of sense. And given Oppenheimer’s schedule for facility to become operational, we’ll see what Apple has planned for the site sooner rather than later.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

GM Launches Venture Capital Arm, Starting With $100M

Josie Garthwaite — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:51:31 +0000

Rev your engines, auto startups — there’s a new VC in town that wants to back your tech innovation and it has some serious connections in the auto industry. General Motors announced this morning that it has created a new subsidiary to identify, develop and invest in innovative technologies in the transportation sector. Dubbed General Motors Ventures, LLC, this VC arm of the Detroit automaker is starting out with an investment of $100 million, and GM says it is now in the process of “exploring equity investments in a number of auto-related technologies and business models.”

Leading GM Ventures will be Jon Lauckner, a top executive in the development of the plug-in Chevy Volt, starting July 1. Lauckner (one of our Top 15 Connected Car Influencers) will report to GM vice chairman and VP of Corporate Strategy and New Business Development Stephen Girsky, a former auto industry analyst at Morgan Stanley and longtime thorn in the side of car companies.

Girsky joined GM’s board last summer, and CEO Ed Whitacre tapped him as a special adviser in December. ”We are constantly looking for ways to deliver the best technology for our customers,” Girsky said in a statement today. “Our goal is to nurture these innovative technologies to help bring them to market, and to ensure our customers have access to the best technology available.”

General Motors has invested in greentech startups in the past. Back in early 2008, the automaker joined Khosla Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures and Great Point Ventures in backing biofuel developer Coskata. GM and Coskata said at the time that they would partner on ethanol research and development, and work to build the infrastructure needed to commercialize the biofuel. GM said it would utilize the fuel from the demonstration facility, and would also provide some of its carbon-based waste (think old tires) as a feedstock for Coskata. Also in 2008 GM partnered with ethanol startup Mascoma and took an equity stake in the company.

That kind of relationship with a major automaker could be a huge boon for some of the green auto innovators that have sprouted up in recent years. Many of them have described goals of licensing or selling their tech and products to major automakers, and some have scored investment or limited supply deals. For example, Daimler invested $50 million in Tesla Motors last year, and signed up to deploy Tesla’s battery packs at demonstration scale in its electric Smart Fortwo. Ener1 subsidiary EnerDel has a limited supply agreement with Volvo for the initial run of its electric C30. Chrysler and Fiat have agreed to use batteries from A123 Systems in the electric version of the Fiat 500 minicar that’s set for a U.S. launch in 2012.

Additionally, GM has partnered (without making an investment) with lithium-ion battery developer Sakti3 of Ann Arbor, Mich., with the automaker offering “vehicle capability and pack capability,” and Sakti3 “bringing cell expertise.” In a separate deal, Sakti3 CEO Ann Marie Sastry is also helping to retrain 50 GM engineers at the University of Michigan.

Despite a few startups making headway with legacy auto manufacturers, most automakers have been slow moving when it comes to betting on young ventures for energy storage and MPG-boosting tech. With GM’s move to dedicate a new subsidiary entirely to seeking out, developing and commercializing innovative business models and technologies (at a time when it’s looking to boost its green image and is working on an $8 million expansion of its battery systems lab), at least one automaker is gearing up for a pretty sizable bet.

Who might be in the running to benefit from GM’s $100 million fund, and potentially gain access to its testing facilities? Check out our lists of 7 Startups Building Green Car Tech for a Pre-Electric World, and 20 Battery Startups Hitting the Road With Lithium-ion.

Images courtesy of General Motors

Related research on GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

How to Break Into The Energy Storage Market

How EV Battery Startups Can Cross the Valley of Death

Why Google Android’s Electric Vehicle Deal With GM Matters

Amyris' Total Funds Reach $244M, Still Not Commercial

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:56:13 +0000

As Synthetic Genomics founder and geneticist guru Craig Venter said recently, if biofuel companies don’t generate billions of gallons of fuel then they’re just playing and wasting investors money (he said that specifically about algae fuel). And so the race continues for next-gen biofuel players struggling to raise lots of money and move into commercialization. This morning biofuel maker Amyris Biotechnologies, which is developing synthetic organisms to make chemicals and biofuels, said it has raised close to $50 million more from Temasek Holdings, bringing its total funding to $244 million.

But, not unusual for the next-gen biofuel crew, despite its deep pockets the company still isn’t producing its synthetic organism-based biofuel at a commercial scale. Amyris said back in October that its next funding in 2010 would be used to advance its goal of commercializing in 2011.

The company opened its first pilot plant in Emeryville, Calif. in 2008 and opened another pilot plant, as well as a demonstration plant, in Campinas, Brazil, in 2009. The company told us in October it is pinning down its first commercial production site and plans to begin ordering equipment for the plant by the end of 2009.

Investors have seemed to grow weary lately of supporting these companies with long times to commercialization (Range Fuels, Coskata, Synthetic Genomics). And previous investor interest in biofuels seems to have trended toward support of electric vehicles and EV infrastructure, according to investment figures for the first quarter of 2010 out from the Cleantech Group this week.

Compared to some of its competitors, 7-year-old Amyris has made significant progress over its lifetime, and its long list of investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, TPG Biotechnology, Votorantim Novos Negocios, Advanced Equities Inc., DAG Ventures, Grupo Cornélio Brennand, Naxos U.K., The Westly Group and Stratus Group. While there’s been some rumors that Amyris would file for an IPO soon, this latest funding suggests the company has turned to the private sector over public markets — for now.