NWF Plan to use native plants for biofuel

The National Wildlife Federation has announced a proposal to help farmers switch to growing native grasses, trees, and other plants that have the potential to double energy yields per acre, with just a fraction of the energy needed to produce corn-based ethanol.

The Biofuels Innovation Program would provide financial and technical assistance to landowners to produce native perennial energy crops and crop mixes in a manner that protects the nation's soil, air, water and wildlife. The growing of these dedicated energy crops would help support the development or expansion of facilities that use the material for biofuels, electricity, heat, or bio-based products. The program could be enacted under the energy title of the Farm Bill of 2007.

Our native grasses which are so important to wildlife have been disappearing but this program provides an important incentive to plant mixes of natives that can do double duty for energy and wildlife.

The program would support production of switchgrass for ethanol, it would also support jojoba for biodiesel, mixed prairie grasses for gasification to generate electricity, trees or grasses for “co-generation” of electricity, and other alternative energies. The plants used must be perennials native to the United States, and not have the potential to become invasive.

The Biofuels Innovation Program provides an incentive to grow our energy future in a way that provides multiple benefits for farmers, wildlife, hunters and anglers and energy users. It's a win-win-win plan.

UC Berkeley establishes Energy Biosciences Institute for Biofuel research

Energy Biosciences Institute is a partnership led by UC Berkeley to find clean, sustainable sources of energy and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Oil giant BP will give $500 million and California has pledged $40 million to the center.

UC Berkeley will team up with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to develop fuel from plants, improve the extraction of oil from existing reserves and find ways to keep carbon from entering the atmosphere.
This is the first research laboratory dedicated to the development of alternative fuels. California claims to be the world center for biofuels research. A building to house the institute will be built on UC land at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Officials of both universities said they expect the institute to begin operating by June. The institute will be part of a broader effort by the UC to develop alternative fuels from hydrogen, helium, wind and solar energy.

BP has agreed to provide $50 million a year for 10 years to the institute, an unusual partnership between the universities, the oil company and state and federal governments. As many as 50 BP employees will work at the two campuses. Much of what the institute develops will be made available to the public, but BP will retain exclusive control over certain discoveries.

Steven Chu, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997 and is director of the Lawrence Berkeley lab, said the institute would take a team approach with scientists from different disciplines collaborating in as many as 25 groups. The institute will create the new discipline of "energy biosciences" and will offer instruction to undergraduate and graduate students in the hope of nurturing a new generation of experts in alternative fuels.

"This is our generation's moon shot," said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.