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ArborGen a Partner in New National $125 million Bioenergy Center

Research into Advanced Biofuels Aimed at Boosting America’s Energy Independence

SUMMERVILLE, S.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory has won a bid from the Department of Energy for a $125 million bioenergy research center that will seek new ways to produce biofuels. ArborGen, LLC, a world leader in tree research and development, was named as one of the partners.

Funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the Bioenergy Science Center will be located on the ORNL campus in a new facility funded by the state and owned by the University of Tennessee. The center, one of three funded from more than 20 proposals, will employ the interdisciplinary expertise of the team's partners in biology, engineering and agricultural science and commercialization to develop processes for converting plants, including switchgrass and poplar trees, into fuels.

In announcing the awards, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said, "These centers will provide the transformational science needed for bioenergy breakthroughs to advance President Bush's goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive with gasoline by 2012, and assist in reducing America's gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. The collaborations of academic, corporate, and national laboratory researchers represented by these centers are truly impressive and I am very encouraged by the potential they hold for advancing America's energy security."

Barbara Wells, President and Chief Executive Officer of ArborGen, is excited about her company’s role in the new bioenergy center, noting that purpose grown trees being developed by ArborGen will be a key resource for green bioenergy. “We are in the beginning stages of a new biobased economy and the breakthrough discoveries that will benefit society and the environment,” Wells said. She added that trees dedicated to energy production will play a crucial role in meeting the demand for biofuels. “Renewable energy can create new markets for green products, boost local economic development, enhance national energy security, and benefit the environment through lower emissions and cleaner air,” Wells said.

In addition to ORNL and ArborGen, the DOE Bioenergy Science Center partners are the University of Tennessee, Dartmouth College, the University of Georgia, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and companies; Diversa (now Verenium Corp.) in San Diego, Calif., and Mascoma in Cambridge, Mass. The team also includes seven individual researchers from across the country. ORNL's Martin Keller will serve as director for the center.

ORNL Director Jeff Wadsworth said the DOE project "will be a critical part of America's efforts over the next decade to develop alternatives to fossil fuels. I am proud that Oak Ridge will continue to play a leading role in addressing one of the nation's biggest scientific challenges."

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen noted that the DOE's award follows by two weeks approval by the state legislature of a $61 million package for bioenergy research at ORNL and the University of Tennessee. The appropriation includes construction of a 5 million gallon-per-year pilot plant for demonstration of switchgrass-to-ethanol conversion based upon research at the DOE Bioenergy Science Center. "These two investments together position Tennessee and the South to be among the leaders in the emerging field of bioenergy," Bredesen said.

The ORNL-led project will focus on new methods of processing plants into biofuel. The strategy involves breaking down into simple sugars the lattice of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin that makes plant cell walls resistant to the stress of weather, insects and disease. These sugars can then be processed into fuel. To date, no cost effective bioprocessing methods for cellulose-based bioenergy sources have been developed. The DOE Bioenergy Science Center will focus on achieving the specific goals of:

* Modifying plant cell walls to reduce their resistance to breakdown, with a focus on the poplar tree-whose genome ORNL researchers helped sequence last year-and switchgrass, a native grass that can be easily grown in most of the U.S. Such modification would decrease or eliminate the need for costly chemical pretreatments now required.
* Consolidated bioprocessing, which involves the use of a single microorganism or group of organisms to break down plant matter through a one-step conversion process of biomass into biofuels.

About ArborGen

ArborGen, based in Summerville, South Carolina, is a world leader in the research, development and commercialization of technologies that provide purpose grown trees for the forest products industry. We also are developing trees as feedstock for ethanol production, an important solution for meeting the world’s growing demand for renewable energy. ArborGen is dedicated to developing purpose grown trees that produce more wood on less land in sustainable planted forests, thereby conserving the world's native forests in all their diversity and complexity for future generations.

NOTE TO EDITORS: You may read other press releases from Oak Ridge National Laboratory or learn more about the lab at http://www.ornl.gov/news.

For more information on the DOE Bioenergy Science Center, its partners and facilities, see www.bioenergycenter.org.

ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy.