David Aslin joined global investment firm 3i in 1998, and was involved in a variety of investments in his native Europe. In the fall of 2000 he moved to the U.S., and has been prominent in growing 3i's clean technology portfolio.

David focuses on early stage investments and is especially interested in novel materials and processes, including nanotechnology applications. He has over 20 years of experience at the General Manager and C-level, with several senior positions with Hewlett-Packard. He was also a GM at Applied Biosystems.

David holds an MS in Instrumentation from Imperial College, London and BS level qualifications in Chemistry and Electronics. He attended Management Skills for International Business at INSEAD and has a CBA from Warwick Business School. He's recognized under the Royal Charter as a Professional Chemist, is a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a founder member of the VC~Angel Roundtable.

David Aslin of 3i, pictured here without standard-VC-issue BlackBerry.

David's been doing some thinking - and from our conversation, a little worrying - about where the biofuel industry in America is heading, and what investments make good sense. While he says his views on the fuels area are "still emerging", he feels strongly about the issues - like sorting out what's real in ethanol and biodiesel rhetoric, and what the industry should be doing.

We understand you liked our piece on Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute's new work suggesting the world isn't going to be able to produce enough corn to meet forecasted ethanol production targets (see Corn ethanol crisis looming, says watchdog.)

I completely resonated with what Lester Brown said in your article. With even Barack Obama now calling for 60 billion plus gallons of biofuel in the U.S. within a few years, the question becomes how to meet that. Of course the corn lobby is playing it for all it's worth.

Leaving the issue of food substitution out for a moment, as your article pointed out, the sheer acreages that are going to be required are daunting.

There was a dramatic increase in 2006 in corn plantings over the prior year, and the industry forecasts an additional 10 million acres in 2007 in response to the need for fuel. How much of that is going to be available for food if all these ethanol plants being constructed actually come online, and at what price? (Heck, there's way too much corn syrup in U.S. food industry products anyway, so if we take a bit of the excess sugar out of people's food, that won't be a bad thing for the nation's health!)

Seriously, though, it's nice to see some more facts around the issue. It was good to see someone do some more detailed work.

There's a lot of emotion around the subject. Good quality math and sensible assumptions, as reported in your articles on the subject [ed.: well then, also see Politicians want to increase ethanol production 10x], are beginning to illustrate that, regarding the expectation Capitol Hill and the financial community seem to have regarding ethanol production, you can't get there from here.

Has your firm done any research into and/or investing in cellulosic ethanol?

I have a strong science background in chemistry. I've looked at cellulosic a little bit, and I have to say there's nobody in the front who's really got the bit between the teeth there.

In cellulosic, I've looked at a few deals and tried to figure out for myself what I think the right investment proposition would be. And frankly, it's hard to see how to make it a venture capital play. Private equity maybe, but from a venture point of view, it didn't spark my interest in having potential for our model, which is why I haven't gone farther with it.

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