New bioenergy research center in Bay area

BERKELEY, CA — Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman has announced that a partnership of three national laboratories and three research universities in the San Francisco Bay Area has been chosen to host one of three bioenergy research centers, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).. This new center will be known as the DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and is expected to receive $125 million in DOE funding over five years.

The six partners are the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia), the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University of California (UC) campuses of Berkeley and Davis, and Stanford University.

“These centers 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 percent in 10 years,” Secretary Bodman said. "

Research at the DOE JBEI will focus on biofuels – liquid fuels derived from the solar energy stored in plant biomass. Harnessing even a tiny fraction of the total solar energy available each year could meet most if not all of the nation’s annual transportation energy needs.

Scientific studies have consistently ranked biofuels among the top candidates for meeting large-scale energy needs, particularly in the transportation sector. However, the commercial-scale production of clean, efficient, cost-effective biofuels will require technology-transforming scientific breakthroughs.

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