Verenium Wins FL Grant

Wade Roush1/16/09

In an announcement yesterday, Cambridge, MA-based biofuels startup Verenium said it had won a $7 million grant from the state of Florida to help build a next-generation cellulosic ethanol plant in Highlands County, FL. The plant will use Verenium’s specialty enzymes to turn renewable grasses grown adjacent to the plant site into as much as 36 million gallons of ethanol per year, the company said. The grant was awarded under the Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commission’s $25 million “Farm to Fuel” initiative.

Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush.