"Our mission is to save developers money and ensure smoothoperations," says Mark Fisler, a managing director at U.S. BancorpPiper Jaffray.

Fuel ethanol production, first introduced around 1980, grew to1.7 billion gallons in 2000 and is expected to grow to 3.481billion gallons annually by 2004, according to industry reports.Public policies focused on improving air quality and reducing thenation's dependence on imported oil encouraging ethanol developmenthave driven this increasedproduction.

California's recent decision to eliminate use of MTBE, analternative fuel source, by 2003 has significantly increased thedemand for ethanol. In addition, the Senate Environment and PublicWorks Committee approved a bill in September 2001 to phase out MTBEnationally within four years. This could potentially triple the useof ethanol over the next decade, according to Greenway.