In the latest AutoblogGreen podcast, we featured an interview with Coskata president and CEO Bill Roe. This is a transcription of that interview. For a way-too detailed look at the GM-Coskata cellulosic ethanol partnership discussed in this chat, check out this post.

ABG: I'm here with Bill Roe, CEO of Coskata, and we just listened to the presentations and had a little tour of the laboratories here on the site. I am a little bit interested in this partnership, that is kind of what we are learning about here today between your company and GM. We heard a little bit about what GM can do for you, some of the promotion, bringing it to other people and you said during lunch that other car did approach you and GM sort of was the best fit for you. Can you talk a little bit, now that the tape is rolling, about how that partnership came to be? And why you are excited to work with GM on this.

Roe: I think that the two companies, and for similar and yet dissimilar reasons, have an understanding of what is going to have to happen if there is going to really truly be a revolution in transportation fuels. General Motors clearly had undertaken a study to determine who is out there and what are the best bets, and who is going to be quickest to market in the next generation ethanol space. We did not know that. But concurrently we were looking at the enormity of what has to happen for the billions of gallons of ethanol that conceiveably can be produced to ultimately get to market because there is a tremendous amount of infrastructure change and infrastructure development that is going to have to take place. And so, when we began to look at, in our partnership model, who the players would be that we would necessarily want to talk to that had a long range, and I would emphasize that word "long-range", long view of what had to be done, obviously, the automotive firms came to mind. It just so happened that when we begun to work our way into General Motors to see who could we talk to about this, we found out that they were doing an independent study of their own of next generation ethanol companies, and so we fit right into that discussion. And, they went through the same diligence process with us that they did with – I think they said 14-16,18 other companies, and said; we like many attributes of many of those companies. But we see in Coskata something that is elegantly simply, fast to market and with economics that look like there is as good or better than anything will be in the perceivable future, and that is when they made their decision to partner. That is when we made, certainly, our decision to say "thank you" for supporting us because, again, these really is going to take lots and lots of collaboration and cooperation between major corporations, entrepreneurial start ups, technology companies, universities, and governments to make happen.

Read much more after the jump.