Industry Week reports:

President Obama’s nomination of an alternative-fuels insider to a Department of Energy (DOE) post is the latest news that points to imminent large-scale production of ethanol made from non-edible plant sources (cellulose) in the United States.
On March 23 Obama announced his nomination of Steven Koonin, chief scientist at BP, to the Undersecretary of Science position, which reports to DOE Secretary Steven Chu. Koonin, a physicist, has focused heavily on alternative energy research since joining BP in 2004, and he and Chu previously collaborated on biofuels research through a BP partnership with academia.
The president and others see development of a cellulosic ethanol industry as crucial to meet the federal Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) mandate for the transportation fuel industry to produce 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2012. Producers will make 11 billion of renewable fuels this year, according to the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA).