DOE Awards $375M for Three BioFuel Research Centers

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced this week it will invest up to $375 million over five years in three new Bioenergy Research Centers to be located in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Madison, Wisc., and near Berkeley, Calif. The winning sites were selected through a competitive, peer-review process that began last year and included more than a dozen applicants from across the country.

 

Using multidisciplinary teams from several institutions, the centers' research will emphasize understanding how to reengineer biological processes to develop new, more efficient methods for converting the cellulose in plant material into ethanol or other biofuels that serve as a substitute for gasoline. DOE believes this research is critical because 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 nonedible portions of crops.



The centers will bring together diverse teams of researchers from 18 of the nation's leading universities, seven DOE national laboratories, at least one nonprofit organization, and a range of private companies. All three centers are located in geographically distinct areas and will use different plants both for laboratory research and for improving feedstock crops.



The three Bioenergy Research Centers involve the following partners:

• The DOE BioEnergy Science Center led by the DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge. Collaborators include Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta; DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.; University of Georgia in Athens, Ga.; Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.; and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
• The DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center will be led by the University of Wisconsin in Madison, in close collaboration with Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich. Other collaborators include: DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.; Lucigen Corporation in Middleton, Wisc.; University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla.; DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Illinois State University in Normal, Ill.; and Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.
• The DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute will be led by DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and collaborators include: Sandia National Laboratories; DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; University of California - Berkeley; University of California - Davis; and Stanford University.

The mission of the Bioenergy Research Centers will lie between basic and applied science, focusing on bioenergy applications. The centers aim to identify practical solutions to producing renewable, carbon-neutral energy. At the same time, the centers will be grounded in basic research, pursuing alternative avenues and a range of high-risk, high-return approaches to finding solutions. To some degree, one key to the centers' success will be their ability to develop the more basic dimensions of their research to a point that can easily transition to applied research.



Subject to the finalization of contract terms and congressional appropriations, the centers are expected to begin work in 2008 and be fully operational by 2009.