Here's one outfit that's making some progress
Coskata states it can produce cellulosic ethanol for “under a buck a gallon.†It has 16 patents issued or in development, and states its design can achieve more than 100 gallons of ethanol per dry ton of input material. Since moving its microorganism from the University of Oklahoma labs to Coskata’s, company scientists have increased the strain’s ethanol productivity rate by 50-fold. Argonne National Laboratory gave Coskata’s ethanol a 7.7-to-1 net energy balance compared with corn-based ethanol’s 1.3-to-1 ratio.
GM is also the company working on the Volt true hybrid-electric.