The use of renewable raw materials as feedstocks for chemical production is continually suggested as offering many advantages over conventional petrochemical feedstocks, including a lowered demand for crude oil, greater sustainability of the raw material, and the ability to recycle CO2. Renewables also provide a source of new, structurally interesting building blocks with novel properties and applications. Many well known biochemical processes are rich sources of such compounds. For example, the citric acid cycle produces 2-ketoglutaric acid (2-KGA) as a key intermediate. Other pathways metabolize aromatics and produce 3-ketoadipic acid. Together, these types of processes could be the basis of a biorefinery operating unit using hybrid chemical/biochemical processes to convert carbohydrates and lignin into a wide family of monomers and polymers. We will report recent results in our investigation to use 2-KGA as a component of new polyesters. The reaction of 2-KGA with different diols leads to the production of new crosslinked polymeric materials whose properties can be controlled as a function of the polymerization conditions. We will also describe our current results using 2-KGA as a starting material for the synthesis of a broader family of renewables based chemical building blocks.