In North Carolina, the same process plants use to respond to environmental stress acts as an on/off switch for a key enzyme in wood formation, NC State researchers have found. The discovery improves scientists’ understanding of how lignin, which gives wood its strength and ability to transport water, is formed in plants and how it can […]
In Michigan, converting large tracts of the Midwest’s marginal farming land to perennial biofuel crops carries with it some key unknowns, including how it could affect the balance of water between rainfall, evaporation and movement of soil water to groundwater. In humid climates such as the U.S. Midwest, evaporation returns more than half of the […]
In Brussels, International Renewable Energy Agency released three reports today for Fiji, the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu, concluding that a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, marine, biomass and biofuel could meet domestic energy needs while decreasing electricity costs, increasing energy access, and boosting energy independence. Renewables Readiness Assessments offer a holistic evaluation of conditions for […]
In Wisconsin, a team of investigators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Michigan State University have created a process for making the work environment less toxic — literally — for the organisms that do the heavy lifting in the increasingly important field of bio-products derived from cellulosic biomass. When industrious bacteria like Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Zymomonas […]
In Washington, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) intends to issue, on behalf of the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled “Bioenergy Technologies Incubator 2”. BETO’s mission is to engage in research and development (R&D) and demonstration activities at increasing scale to transform renewable biomass resources into commercially […]
In Illinois, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have, for the first time, uncovered the complex interdependence and orchestration of metabolic reactions, gene regulation, and environmental cues of clostridial metabolism, providing new insights for advanced biofuel development. It typically involves complex biochemical processes implemented through the orchestration of metabolic reactions and gene regulation, […]
In Maryland, Morgan State University professor and lab director for the School of Engineering’s Industrial and Systems Engineering department, Dr. Seong W. Lee, and his research team are the recipients of a $100,000 Phase 1 award from the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) to transition his CycloBurn Combustion System™ from prototype to commercialization. The innovative new system uses a proprietary […]
In Brussels, a new interactive website “www.BiofuelsforEurope.eu” launched today in the European Parliament to summarize the latest science on key biofuels issues using fact-based, understandable information. BP, Novozymes, Scania and Shell have sponsored the initiative in the common view that biofuels, when sustainably produced, have a positive role to play in decarbonizing the transport sector in […]
In Indiana, Purdue University has been awarded $6.5 million by the U.S. Department of Energy for research aimed at producing superior strains of sorghum suitable for growing as a biofuel. The grant is among six Transportation Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture awards nationwide from DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The projects are focused on accelerating […]
In Missouri, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center announced it was awarded an $8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy ARPA–E TERRA program. Funds will be used for research to accelerate breeding and the commercial release of economically viable bioenergy sorghum hybrids. Todd Mockler, Ph.D., Geraldine and Robert Virgil Distinguished Investigator at the […]
