Clarion Ledger looks at KiOR matter

A post by Sid Salter in the (Jackson, MS) Clarion Ledger includes
the text:

--

Yet months later Biofuels Daily still hailed two Kior principals as being among the Top 25 People in Bioenergy in 2011–12. Coming in at No. 19 was venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who was Kior's primary investor. Khosla was noted by the publication as "instrumental in establishing a public market for advanced biofuels stocks."

Right behind him at No. 20 on the Bioenergy hit parade was Kior CEO Fred Cannon.

But in the interim from those heady days, Kior's fortunes changed and so, too, did the investment of Mississippi's taxpayers in the technology.

In 2015, Kior is in bankruptcy. The state of Mississippi is suing Kior executives including Khosla and Cannon, among others. The lawsuit accuses the defendants of committing fraud to get the $75 million in economic incentives from state taxpayers.

More to the point, the lawsuit claims that the defendants intentionally misled Barbour, MDA officials and state lawmakers by overstating the capabilities of the technology to produce the crude oil substitute yields from the biomass.

The lawsuit alleges that Kior assured the state that 67 gallons of biocrude had been produced per ton of dry wood in the Texas demonstration plant, when in reality, the actual biocrude yield was more like "30 to 40" gallons per ton of dry wood.

--
 See

Salter: Rapunzel was going to spin kudzu into black gold

--

The state of Mississippi is going after Khosla and some at KiOR for fraud.  [In passing, one recalls the famous case against Samuel Insull.]




Ipbiz believes Mr Salter may have been referring to biofuelsdigest with its:

The Top 100 People in Bioenergy 2011-12: #1 through #25, in depth

Including

--

19. Vinod Khosla, Managing Partner, Khosla Ventures

A popular figure with readers, Khosla has toned down his biofuels profile in recent years, but still rates high for his teams’ wide portfolio of advanced biofuels bets, his strong voice on policy, and for unparalleled financial commitment to transformation of energy. A large number of his investments, in companies raging from Amyris to Mascoma, have headed for the IPO window – some say “prematurely”, but he’s been instrumental thereby in establishing a public market for advanced biofuels stocks.

20. Fred Cannon, PhD, CEO, KiOR

Anyone who gets US presidential hopeful and climate-skeptic Haley Barbour to call a special session of the Mississippi legislature to ram through $50 million in support for a new biofuels technology knows a thing or two about making things happen. That’s precisely what Fred Cannon and KiOR have accomplished, practically before getting out of the lab. Now, they have completed their IPO and are headed for scale. Remarkable progress that has transformed attitudes about pyrolysis-based technologies.

--

It is refreshing to see someone checking out "what people said then" as opposed to now.

One of the ipbiz favorites of course is what the MIT Tech Review said about the work of Jan Hendrik Schon, prior to the work being found fraudulent.