WASHINGTON, DC, USA, July 4, 2007.
Three new research centres will receive US$375 million in federal funding to accelerate basic research in the development of cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels.
The U.S. Department of Energy will fund facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Madison, Wisconsin; and Berkeley, California, as part of President George Bush’s ‘Twenty in Ten Initiative’ which seeks to reduce U.S. gasoline consumption by 20% within ten years through increased efficiency and diversification of clean energy sources. DOE will fund the centres for the first five years of operation.
“These centres will provide the transformational science needed for bioenergy breakthroughs to advance President Bush’s goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive with gasoline by 2012, and assist in reducing America’s gasoline consumption by 20% in ten years,” says federal energy secretary Samuel Bodman. “The collaborations of academic, corporate and national laboratory researchers represented by these centres are truly impressive and I am very encouraged by the potential they hold for advancing America’s energy security.”
The facilities will be supported by multi-disciplinary teams of scientists, and the major focus will be on understanding how to re-engineer biological processes to develop more efficient methods for converting the cellulose in plant material into ethanol or other biofuels that can substitute for gasoline. Future biofuels production will require the use of feedstocks more diverse than corn, including cellulosic material such as agricultural residues, grasses, poplar trees, inedible plants, and non-edible portions of crops, DOE explains.
The centres will bring together researchers from 18 universities and seven DOE national laboratories, as well as non-profit groups and a range of private companies. All three facilities are located in geographically-distinct areas and will use different plants both for laboratory research and for improving feedstock crops.
The DOE laboratories involved in the initiative include Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee (with collaboration from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (with collaboration from Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).
Subject to contract terms and congressional appropriations, the centres will begin work next year and be fully operational by 2009. DOE issued a competitive funding opportunity announcement in August 2006 to solicit applications and the three centres were selected following a competitive review process.
The establishment of the bioenergy research centres culminates a six-year effort by DOE’s Office of Science to lay the foundation for breakthroughs in systems biology for the cost-effective production of renewable energy, the department explains. Last July, DOE issued a joint biofuels research agenda with its Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy and the report provides a detailed roadmap for cellulosic ethanol research, identifying key roadblocks and areas where scientific breakthroughs are needed.
