Des Moines Register
08-29-06
ISU courts energy institute
Oil company BP to invest $500 million, somewhere
By ANNE FITZGERALD
REGISTER AGRIBUSINESS WRITER
Ames, Ia. — Iowa State University is being considered as a possible site for a
$500 million bioenergy institute to be established by BP, one of the world's
largest oil companies, company and ISU officials said Monday.
The company announced in June that it would dedicate $50 million a year for 10
years to research through its Energy Biosciences Institute. The institute will be a
"bricks and mortar" facility located next to a university, Jim Breson, general
manager of the project, said in a keynote address at Iowa State's annual
bioeconomy conference, which concludes today in Ames.
The institute will be dedicated to public research, as well as proprietary research,
said Breson, an ISU graduate.
Universities across the United States are vying to persuade BP to locate the
institute near them. In September, the company will invite fewer than a dozen
institutions to submit proposals, Breson said.
"Iowa State has genetics," Breson said Monday. "It has crops. It has robust
agriculture. It has familiarity with harvesting techniques and material handling."
Earlier this month, Breson visited Iowa State to learn more about its capabilities
in bioenergy, a growing industry that seeks to tap plants and other renewable
resources as sources of fuel and other energy products in the face of dwindling
global supplies of oil.
Iowa State officials plan to talk more with Breson today about the possibility of
BP locating its institute in Ames, where the land-grant university is based, said
Robert Brown, director of the university's Office of Biorenewables Programs.
"We're pleased that they are talking to us," he said. "They claim they will make a
final decision by December. I wish the federal government ran that fast."
Iowa State faces tough competition, however, Brown and others said.
Competitors include Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the universities
of California-Berkeley and California-San Diego. Those schools have an
advantage because they are in major biotechnology corridors, which Brown
called "a very key piece" of BP's project.
Iowa's advantage is its location in the heart of the world's largest grain-growing
region, as well as its expertise in production, storage, handling and processing of
grain, soybeans and other crops. Those, too, are crucial to the project, Brown
said.
"They don't have the resource base," he said of the research universities on the
East Coast and in California. "They don't have the commitment, I don't think. For
them, it's just another research project. For us, it's the transformation of the
economy of the state."
Iowa also has this connection: DuPont, owner of Pioneer Hi-Bred International
Inc., is partnering with BP to retrofit an idle ethanol plant to produce biobutanol,
another alternative fuel, in the United Kingdom.
Larry Johnson, director of ISU's Center for Crops Utilization Research, said the
university and the state are orchestrating "an all-out assault to get them to come"
to Iowa State.
Part of the pitch is the growing push on campus for university researchers to
collaborate with private industry and to commercialize research findings. That
would appeal to BP, Johnson said. "They want to be able to engage the faculty
over the water cooler," he said.
If Iowa State succeeds in persuading BP to locate the institute in central Iowa, "it
would be huge," Johnson said. "But the competition is going to be fierce,
formidable."
Jay-Lin Jane, an Iowa State professor of food science and human nutrition,
said a forum featuring Breson attracted a larger-than-expected crowd on Aug. 8.
She said Iowa State has built a multidisciplinary approach to work on issues key
to the burgeoning bioeconomy.
Second generation
CELLULOSIC FUELS: As momentum builds in bio-based fuels, the focus is
increasingly on cellulosic fuel production — the "second generation" of biofuels
— and not on corn-based ethanol, said Jim Breson and other speakers at an
Iowa State University conference.
CORN FUTURE:
• Some in the corn business worry that the crop could be bypassed as the
leading feedstock of bio-based fuels and other products, after growers have
invested more than two decades to build governmental and consumer support for
the fuel additive.
• But many corn growers see cellulosic fuels as a natural extension of corn-based
ethanol, not the end of it.
"We think there's room for both feedstocks," said Rodney Williamson, an official
with the Iowa Corn Promotion Board. "We think of it as just expanding the market
opportunity. We don't think it's going to have negative consequences for cornbased ethanol."
EFFICIENCY: While researchers work to improve efficiencies of cellulosic
ethanol production, public and private sector scientists also are pushing to
increase the efficiency of corn-based ethanol production, participants in the
conference said.
"Corn is not going to sit still in its efficiency," said Bill Northey, a north-central
Iowa farmer and Republican candidate for Iowa secretary of agriculture.
He and others also said existing corn-based ethanol plants could be equipped to
accommodate cellulosic production.
COMPATIBILITY: "There really is some cross-compatibility," Northey said. Fiber
found in dried distillers grains, ethanol's principal co-product, for instance, can be
used to generate heat for ethanol production, he said.
- Anne Fitzgerald