Anyone who is working in the fuels industry knows that we are living in challenging times. On a personal note, I recall that ~5 years ago, some of my children's friends headed out into the petroleum industry to start their careers and several have now returned because of the retrenching work force. Despite these challenging times, the cellulosic ethanol industry continues to develop commercial operations, but with today's cost structure, biofuels production facilities have certainly slowed their pace of development and roll-out. Furthermore, the biological technology platform for biorefining plant polysaccharides to biofuels has been reported to have an intrinsic advantage, if it can convert its waste lignin stream to value-added components.[1]