UW wins biofuel grant, and is in the running for DHS agro defense lab
University of Wisconsin wins biofuel grant: $125 million will fund center researching ways to convert plant matter into fuel
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has won one of the largest federal grants in its history to create a center to explore how to convert cornstalks, wood chips, grass, and other plant material into fuel for cars and power plants. The $125 million, five-year grant was announced yesterday by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), and it will be supplemented by more than $100 million in state and private-sector funding.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Kathleen Gallagher and Thomas Content report that the money will be used to launch a Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center in Madison which will focus on finding ways to create forms of cellulosic ethanol — fuel created from inedible plant matter.
Interest in biofuels and renewable energy has surged against a backdrop of growing concerns about rising oil prices, the country’s reliance on imported oil and global warming. The choice of Madison is jot surprising, as across the Midwest, abundant farms and forests will create the raw materials for next-generation fuels. “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 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, Tennessee, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory near Berkeley, California.
In addition to the $125 million in federal funds for the Wisconsin center, the state will invest $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.
Note that UW-Madison has already served as the launch pad for a biofuels company based in Madison. Virent Energy Systems is working on projects to make gasoline from the sugar in plant matter as well as hydrogen from sugar. Last week, the science journal Nature (447 [21 June 2007]: 982-85; sub. req.) published results of research by chemical engineering professor James Dumesic, a founder of Virent, concerning a new way to convert sugar into fuel.
UW-Madison is also one of seventeen applicants being considered by DHS for a National Bio- and Agro-Defense Lab that which would study foot-and-mouth disease, bird flu, and other deadly animal illnesses.
