The U.S. Department of Energy has renewed a five-year, $590 million funding initiative to advance the development of plant-based fuels and chemicals.
The funds will be distributed to its four Bioenergy Research Centers, which support the department’s research into sustainable, cost-effective bioproducts and bioenergy from domestic biomass resources, the Energy Department said in a March 17 news release.
Over the past 15 years, the research centers have focused on developing fuels and chemicals from bioenergy crops. The latest renewal allows the centers to build on their research and help the United States meet President Biden’s goal of a net-zero emission economy by 2050, according to the department.
For example, a center led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is developing processes that turn plants into high-value chemicals. This includes the use of organisms that convert plant-derived sugars and oils to biofuels and value-added bioproducts, such as fatty alcohols, triacetic acid lactone, 3-hydroxypropanoic acid (3-HP) and citramalate.
Researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation in Urbana, Illinois, are pursuing a vision of “plants as factories,” for sustainable production of biofuels and bioproducts.
The four centers are led by a national laboratory or university. Other centers include the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, the Center for Bioenergy Innovation and the Joint BioEnergy Institute
