Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WI
06-26-07
UW wins biofuel grant
$125 million will fund center researching ways to convert plant matter into fuel
By KATHLEEN GALLAGHER and THOMAS CONTENT
kgallagher@journalsentinel.com
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has won one of the largest federal grants in
its history to create a center that will explore how to convert cornstalks, wood
chips, grass and other plant material into fuel for cars and power plants.
85860Biofuel Grant
UW's Partners
Michigan State is UW-Madison's major partner for the Energy Department's
Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, but there are many others:
Research partners: Michigan State; Energy's Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory, Richland, Wash.; University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla.; Energy's
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Illinois State University,
Normal, Ill.; Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.
Corporate partners: Alliant Energy, Madison; Best Energies, Madison; Flambeau
River Biorefinery LLC, Hayward; Lucigen Corp., Middleton; Madison Gas &
Electric Co., Madison; Miller Brewing Co., Milwaukee; and Stora Enso North
America Corp.
The $125 million, five-year grant, announced Tuesday by the U.S. Department of
Energy, will be supplemented by more than $100 million in state and privatesector funding. It could generate many times that amount in new technology
investments aimed at lessening U.S. reliance on imported oil.
The money will spawn a Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center in Madison,
the first federally funded research center the state has attracted in decades. It will
focus on finding ways to create forms of "cellulosic ethanol" - fuel created from
inedible plant matter.
"The mission of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center is grand but simple:
We will remove bottlenecks that currently prevent us from realizing the promise
of bioenergy as one way of reducing our dependency on fossil fuels," said Tim
Donohue, a UW-Madison professor of bacteriology who will be the center's
director.
The announcement comes as interest in biofuels and renewable energy has
surged amid growing concerns about rising oil prices, the country's reliance on
imported oil and global warming.
Across the Midwest, abundant farms and forests will create the raw materials for
next-generation fuels, but research is still needed to investigate a variety of plant
matter in detail to determine its energy potential.
"We're seeing in Wisconsin the birth of a biofuels industry that's going to
transform rural Wisconsin," said Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology
Council.
The award is significant for the state, coming several months after the state lost
out on funding for a pilot biorefinery project that would enable the paper industry
to make renewable energy from wood products.
"Individual professors have been very good at winning research grants, but this is
the first major, federally funded center since the university was awarded the
Forest Service Forest Products Lab in 1910," said Tom Hefty, president of the
Waukesha-based Kern Family Foundation.
Still said he considers the National Wildlife Health Center, established in Madison
in 1975, as another major federally funded lab.
Universities to collaborate
UW-Madison will lead the Bioenergy Research Center in collaboration with
Michigan State University in East Lansing. Other partners include several Energy
Department labs; other universities; and seven companies.
The Madison center will be one of three that the Department of Energy is
creating with a total federal investment of $375 million. The other two are being
led by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory near Berkeley, Calif.
The centers are subject to finalization of contract terms and congressional
appropriations. They are expected to begin work in 2008 and be fully operational
by 2009.
"The investments we are making in these bioenergy centers is high-risk," said
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. "But we expect they will show us the
way to overcome the barriers that are keeping us from developing widespread,
cost-effective biofuels from cellulose."
The centers are being formed to help advance President Bush's "Twenty in Ten"
initiative, which seeks to reduce U.S. gasoline consumption by 20% within 10
years.
In addition to the $125 million in federal funds for the Wisconsin center, the state
will ante up $54 million: $50 million for a bioenergy building on the UW-Madison
campus and $4 million to hire faculty, according to Energy Department fact
sheets and a UW official. The state will work to raise another $50 million for the
building from other sources.
The building will use innovative designs for energy use and construction, said
Molly Jahn, dean of UW-Madison's College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
Jahn led efforts to locate the center in Madison; the proposal was written by
Donohue in conjunction with Michigan State University professor of plant biology
Ken Keegstra.
UW-Madison has already served as the launch pad for a biofuels company
based in Madison.
Virent Energy Systems Inc. is working on projects to make gasoline from the
sugar in plant matter as well as hydrogen from sugar. The company was founded
by UW chemical engineers who developed a low-temperature way of converting
sugar into hydrogen.
Last week, the science journal Nature published results of research by chemical
engineering professor James Dumesic, a founder of Virent, concerning a new
way to convert sugar into fuel.
The Great Lakes center, Donohue said, will work to remove barriers to nextgeneration biofuels and to develop the basic science for other renewable fuels.
"This isn't just about this one application; it's about all of the resources that this
great university has, the research that's gone on in the past, and the recognition
that the University of Wisconsin and its great research capacity can in fact lead
us to energy independence," Gov. Jim Doyle said at a news conference in
Madison.
'Inherent advantage'
The news that the Department of Energy was funding the three centers came on
the seventh anniversary of the announcement that scientists had successfully
mapped the human genome - the genetic blueprint of a human being.
The goal of the initiative is to "take genomics and bring it to the energy world,"
said Raymond Orbach, director of the Department of Energy's Office of Science.
UW-Madison has an "inherent advantage" when it comes to winning big,
complicated projects that bring in researchers from many disciplines because it
has all of them on one campus, said John Wiley, the university's chancellor.
Jahn, who joined the faculty in August, says she's optimistic that UW can win
additional awards of this sort.
"It was one of the reasons I came here: because I see no reason why this isn't
just the beginning," Jahn said. "The strategies we used to get this grant are
strategies that will work to get more federal centers."
UW-Madison is one of 17 applicants being considered by the Department of
Homeland Security for a National Bio- and Agro-Defense Lab that would study
foot-and-mouth disease, bird flu and other deadly animal illnesses. The school
has proposed putting the lab on land it owns southeast of Madison, in the Town
of Dunn. A number of residents have protested the idea of the 520,000-squarefoot building.
Tuesday's announcement also comes as Wisconsin, Iowa and other states are
getting a flurry of investment in new ethanol plants. That ethanol, derived from
corn, accounted for 4% of gasoline consumed last year, Energy Secretary
Bodman said.
"For biofuels to really put a dent on our energy consumption without affecting our
food supply and without adding to our net carbon dioxide emissions, we need to
know how to make biofuels cost- effectively from cellulose," he said.