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Energy Biosciences Institute Funds First 49 Research Projects on Cellulosic Biofuels

The Energy Biosciences Institute (earlier post), the world’s largest public/private consortium dedicated to the application of biosciences to the energy sector, has announced an initial set of 49 research projects for funding during the first year of EBI’s 10-year program.

Projects are being supported at all three of the public partner institutionsthe University of California, Berkeley; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. BP is funding the decade of work with $500 million, about $20 million of which is supporting the first package of projects.

Research is being pursued in four categories related to exploring the opportunities for production of cellulosic biofuels: feedstock development; biomass depolymerization; biofuels production; and the socio-economic impacts of cellulosic biofuels development. A second initiative, concerned with fossil fuel bioprocessing, is expected to receive funding later this year.

An initial thrust of EBI research will be the development of environmentally benign transportation fuels from non-food biomass (cellulosic biofuels). This involves identifying the most suitable species of plants for use as energy crops, and improving methods of breeding, propagation, harvesting, storage and processing of biomass to next-generation fuels. A central objective is to ensure that this is done in a sustainable way without negative impacts on food production or the environment.

From an initial list of more than 250 pre-proposals from researchers at the three institutions, EBI management employed a competitive peer review system to narrow the field to 49 high-priority research efforts that have received funding. Awards were divided into two categories: programs and projects.

Programs are typically large integrated multi-investigator efforts with a single major target, funded at anywhere from about $400,000 per year up to about $1 million per year, and may continue for the 10-year life of the Institute. Projects are smaller activities of 2-3 years in duration that are either too speculative at this stage to be a program or are on a single fixed task. These average about $150,000 per year.

Program research is conducted mostly within the EBI, so that the post-doctoral and graduate student researchers from different disciplines will work side-by-side. This will ensure synergy across fields and will provide a training environment and a broad appreciation of the scientific, technological, environmental, economic and policy issues that must all be addressed to achieve the Institute’s goal of environmentally sustainable bioenergy.

The initial programs and projects are:

FEEDSTOCK DEVELOPMENT. Eight projects and programs are seeking to identify and breed plant species that can maximize cellulosic biomass production on a global scale and to learn how to grow and harvest them sustainably. A primary goal is to discover plants that can produce more biomass, using minimal land, water and energy.

Programs

Projects

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