Energy Biosciences Institute’s Work Is Officially Underway

November 15, 2007 – Vol.12 No.34

Energy Biosciences Institute’s Work Is Officially Underway.

The Institute will perform groundbreaking research aimed at the production of new and cleaner energy, initially focusing on advanced biofuels for road transport.

Strategic partners in EBI - BP, the University of California, Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois - have signed the contract finalizing the Institutes formation thus officially beginning research. Aside from biofuels the Institute will also pursue bioscience-based research in three other key areas; the conversion of heavy hydrocarbons to clean fuels, improved recovery from existing oil and gas reservoirs and carbon sequestration.

Dr. Christopher Somerville will become the director of the Institute. Somerville is an authority on the conversion of plant cellulose to energy, and will join the UC Berkeley faculty as a professor of plant and microbial biology. Somerville is a visiting scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and has been director of the Carnegie Institution Department of Plant Biology and a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University since 1994.

"We are very pleased that the Institute's journey to develop new, cleaner sources of energy has begun. Our mission is to harness the potential of bioenergy, to make discoveries and to help them become commercially viable so they can benefit the world," said Somerville. "The Institute will also examine the social, economic and environmental implications of using cellulosic biofuels to meet a significant proportion of the earth's energy needs."

The effort to create EBI began in 2006 when BP announced that it would invest $500 million over the next ten years to establish the Institute, the first public- private institution of this scale in the world. The Institute's emphasis on new fuels meshed with UC Berkeley's and Berkeley Lab's research aims to develop sustainable sources of energy and Illinois' efforts to develop biofuel feedstocks. The three formed a strategic partnership to submit a proposal to BP, which was selected in February 2007 from among five international proposals.

The Institute is now reviewing 85 research proposals and will award funding this fall. Another round of requests for research proposals is expected in the Spring of 2008(11/15/07)

Links:

Energy Biosciences Institute
http://www.energybiosciencesinstitute.org

Disclaimer, Forward-Looking or Safe Harbor Statement on original press release: No