Universities vying to get BP's $500 million bioenergy R&D fund

Major oil companies are starting to invest heavily in biofuels, with Total committing over €1 billion in research, production and infrastructures in Europe, whereas BP has recently announced it is creating a US$ 500 million R&D fund for bioenergy research in the US or the UK (earlier post).

A research consortium at the University of California at Berkeley is among a handful of applicants vying to become the home of this planned biofuels research center. The consortium, led by the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, or QB3, includes the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley Lab in Berkeley and the US Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek as well as the University of Illinois, which will provide agricultural expertise.

In June, BP said it will spend $500 million over the next 10 years to establish the BP Energy Biosciences Institute, which it described as the "first facility of its kind in the world." The facility will be a dedicated biosciences energy research laboratory attached to a major academic center in the United States or the United Kingdom.

"In terms of impact, anyone who looks at what BP wants to do can assess very quickly that this will be industry-changing for wherever this lands," said Diane Leite, deputy director of QB3. "It's a significant investment in bioenergy and wherever this lands its going to be a hub for this type of research and this type of industry development around it." Leite would not discuss specifics of the application, but said she was part of a delegation that was scheduled to present the UC Berkeley application to BP the week of December 4:
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The UC Berkeley proposal is believed to be one of five being made to BP, which initiated talks with several leading academic institutions over hosting the proposed Energy Biosciences Institute. Other institutions expected to submit applications include the University of California at San Diego, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge University and Imperial College. BP has said it aims to launch early research programs by the end of 2007.

The institute is expected to focus on developing new biofuel components and improving the efficiency and flexibility of those blended with transport fuels. It will also develop new technologies to enhance and accelerate the conversion of organic matter to biofuels with the aim of increasing the proportion of a crop that can be used to produce feedstock. It will also use modern plant science to develop species that produce a higher yield of energy molecules and can be grown on land not suitable for food production.

Scientists from the host university and other academic institutions would staff the institute, along with a handful of specialists from BP.

"The world needs new technologies to maintain adequate supplies of energy for the future," BP CEO John Browne said in June. "Bioscience is already transforming modern medicine and we believe it can bring immense benefits to the energy sector."

BP wants the facility to not only perform research, but to train a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists to marry biotechnology with energy production. It is also expected the institute will be a point for collaboration with leading biotechnology companies focusing on applying biotechnology to energy production.

Should UC capture the institute, it could solidify the Bay Area's leadership as a center for biofuel research. It would join Department of Energy labs, biotechnology companies such as Genencor International and Amyris Biotechnologies and leading research universities already working in the area.

"It's rare that a private company will put resources on this scale into a kind of university-based investment," said Sean Randolph, president and CEO of the Bay Area Economic Forum. "It's an opportunity for the Bay Area and it plays to our strengths because of the very high and sophisticated research that is being done here and now into all kinds of alternative energy and energy-efficient technologies."

Such an agreement at UC Berkeley could reignite a public debate over the relationship between the university and industry. A controversy erupted at the campus in 1998 over a five-year, $25 million research collaboration made by Novartis around plant genomics. However, QB3 was established by the state of California with the specific mission of working with industry to the benefit of the California economy. Already QB3 has fostered several collaborations with industry including such companies as General Electric, Genentech and Nikon.

QB3's Leite said despite the size and scope of the BP proposal, she did not believe an agreement with the company would create controversy because QB3 has established several agreements with industry to date.