Range Fuels, the Khosla Ventures-backed cellulosic ethanol startup, announced on Thursday that longtime oil exec David C. Aldous has joined the company as chief executive officer.

Mr. Aldous has spent 28 years in the energy, oil, and petrochemical industries, most recently as an executive vice president at Royal Dutch Shell. He replaces  the founding CEO, Mitch Mandich, who will continue with Range Fuels as director of the board.

“I bring a lot of experience in more capital intensive businesses,” Mr. Aldous said. “I bring that background and experience to the Range leadership and intend to use my knowledge and skills.”

Mr. Aldous said it was too early to tell if he would make significant changes in the direction of the company.

“Mitch was ready to move onto something else and range needed a CEO who could bring more experience of the energy industry into the team,” said Mr. Aldous.

The announcement comes as the Broomfield, Colorado, company appears to be one of the leading biofuels startups in the hotly contested cellulosic ethanol industry.

Range Fuels has secured more than $80 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and the State of Georgia. In April, the startup raised a $100 million second round of equity funding led by Passport Capital.

The funding is helping Range Fuels build in Soperton, Georgia, what it claims would be the world’s first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plant. The first phase, to be done in 2009, will have a 20 million-gallons-per-year capacity, though the plant is permitted for 120 million gallons per year.

Range Fuels says its production costs will be “significantly lower” than current corn ethanol production costs, but it has not said by how much. Competitors, such as Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Masocoma and Canada’s Iogen, also say their technology will lead to lower cost ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol is widely seen as a better alternative fuel than traditional corn-based ethanol. It requires less water to make, generates less greenhouse gasses, and is made from more plentiful, non-food feedstocks, like fast-growing grasses, agricultural residues, and forest biomass.

Range Fuels proprietary K2 system uses a two-step thermo-chemical conversion process. The first step converts the biomass to synthesis gas and the second step converts the gas to ethanol. The company's business model is to design, build, own, and operate its plants.