Monday, October 26, 2009

Ceres Gets $4.9M Grant From DOE

Thousand Oaks-based Ceres, a developer of energy crops for the biofuels energy, has landed $4,989,144 in a grant from the Department of Energy, as part of a $151M effort to fund energy breakthroughs. According to the DOE, the funding--part of a effort called the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)--was part of a selection of 37 projects pursuing breakthroughs that could "fundamentally change the way we use and produce energy." The grant to Ceres went to a effort to develop "Biomass Energy Genes" to enable energy crops to produce more biomass using less land, less water, and less fertilizer than standard energy crops. The effort is targeted at creating feed stocks for biofuels projects, to displace oil and coal.

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