The Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) is an organization dedicated to developing new
sources of energy and reducing the impact of
energy consumption. It was created in 2007 to apply advanced knowledge of biology to the challenges of responsible,
sustainable energy production and use.
Its main goal is to develop next-generation
biofuels—that is, biofuels that are made from the non-edible parts of plants and reduce
greenhouse gas emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and ...
.
Funded by
BP, which initially agreed to contribute $500 million over a 10-year-period, with $350 million slated for academic research, EBI is a joint initiative between the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
(UCB),
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...
, and the energy company. It is the largest
public-private venture of its kind. All research from its academic labs is published and publicly available. More information about the EBI is available to the public through the EBI Bulletin and its magazine, Bioenergy Connection, which cover emerging trends in the field of bioenergy.)
EBI was designed as a creative, multidisciplinary institution. Because bioenergy research is so complex, the institute promotes a holistic view by encouraging scientists from many disciplines – biology, chemistry, botany,
environmental science, economics, and others – to collaborate on investigations.
The institute's main research areas are:
* feedstock development (work on plant sources of biofuel)
*
biomass depolymerization Depolymerization (or depolymerisation) is the process of converting a polymer into a monomer or a mixture of monomers. This process is driven by an increase in entropy.
Ceiling temperature
The tendency of polymers to depolymerize is indicated by ...
(breaking down the plant cell wall to enable sugar, or energy, extraction)
* biofuel production
* the environmental, social, and economic impact of bioenergy development
* fossil fuel bioprocessing (using microbial processes to help make
oil recovery “greener” and to shrink its
carbon footprint)
Achievements
Since its inception in 2007, EBI has published nearly 500 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Science and Nature. Among its significant investigations:
*Using a former industrial fermentation process, EBI scientists have developed a way to extract the acetone, butanol, and ethanol from a fermentation mixture and reformulate the products using chemical catalysts to produce
diesel
Diesel may refer to:
* Diesel engine, an internal combustion engine where ignition is caused by compression
* Diesel fuel, a liquid fuel used in diesel engines
* Diesel locomotive, a railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engin ...
-like fuels.
* Designing modified yeast strains that could simultaneously use 5-carbon and 6-carbon
sugars, an important step toward creating a platform EBI yeast strain for metabolic engineering
* Developing a series of chemical steps that convert sugars to diesel directly, without
fermentation
* Holding annual conferences on the global bioeconomy and biofuel law and regulation
* Creating a 320-acre farm at the University of Illinois, where scientists monitor the gases emitted, the mineral content of
water runoff
Water (chemical formula ) is an Inorganic compound, inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living ...
,
soil carbon, and plant and animal
biodiversity
Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...
* Sharing and collaborating with scientists and visitors from the United States and many other countries, including Brazil, Norway, Argentina, China, the Netherlands, Germany, and India, at EBI's headquarters in Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The EBI has come under scrutiny from some groups and individuals concerned about the influence of private corporations on public universities. Berkeley campus officials dismiss charges that academic freedom is at risk, noting that BP does not influence EBI's academic research agenda and that all research in EBI's academic labs is unclassified and published.
[Research Administration and Compliance Guidelines, UC Berkeley, http://researchcoi.berkeley.edu/guidelines.html]
Critics also have expressed concerns about first-generation biofuels, such as
corn ethanol, on
food prices
Food prices refer to the average price level for food across countries, regions and on a global scale. Food prices have an impact on producers and consumers of food.
Price levels depend on the food production process, including food marketing ...
and the environment. EBI's focus is on next-generation biofuels, however, which include only non-food plant sources and agricultural waste material.
References
External links
*
UC Berkeley Press ReleaseBP Press ReleaseSan Francisco Chronicle article
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Bioenergy organizations
Research institutes in California
University of California, Berkeley