Statement from Timothy Donohue
June 26, 2007
As principal investigator of the proposal to create the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, I am honored to be here representing an outstanding group of scientists and engineers who bring enormous enthusiasm and wisdom to its future activities. I know I speak for us all, as well as our public and private sector partners, when I say we are thrilled to be selected to host one of the new Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Centers. I know that my wife and son are watching this today, so I want to tell you that this is without a doubt the third most exciting day of my life!
I, and all my partners, are eager to help solve what is arguably the largest socially, environmentally, politically and economically significant challenge of our time, namely the need for new, renewable sources of energy. We are grateful for the vision of the Department of Energy Office of Science in bringing the Bioenergy Research Centers program forward, and we thank program staff and the reviewers for a thorough and timely review of our proposal.
We know this level of investment comes with high hopes and expectations. However, we are confident the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center has the scientific expertise and alliances to meet these expectations and help create a more sustainable energy future. The mission of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center is grand but simple: we will remove bottlenecks that currently prevent us from realizing the promise of bioenergy as one way of reducing our dependency on fossil fuels. The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center will be housed on the UW-Madison campus, but it will function as a national institute for discovery, one that harnesses the power of different disciplines and expertise represented by its existing and future members.
The Center includes outstanding scientists and engineers at leading academic institutions, including UW-Madison and our major partner institution, Michigan State University, as well as the University of Florida, Iowa State University and Illinois State University. It has partners from the DOE Pacific Northwest and Oak Ridge National Laboratories as well as partnerships with two Wisconsin biotechnology companies, Lucigen Corporation and C5-6 Technologies, which are emerging leaders in the bioenergy biofield. Collectively, this group includes many of the nation’s brightest minds in plant biology, chemistry, microbiology, computational biology, biochemistry, engineering and genomics. I would not be standing here today were it not for the scientific excellence of this broad and diverse team — they have shared their creativity and vision to create this Center.
In preparing this proposal, it was gratifying to see the excitement and support from many parts of the States of Wisconsin and Michigan, from the offices and staff of our Governors, through cabinet agencies, local governments, as well as the Congressional delegations of both States. In addition, this enterprise would not have been possible without strong support from our campus administrators, the private sector and commodity groups in our home states or the Midwest.
We are especially proud to have this Center housed in America’s agricultural belt, where we are literally surrounded by the plant biomass that will feed the bioenergy pipeline. Wisconsin and Michigan are two of 12 upper Midwestern states that produce several hundred million tons of potential energy crops, grasses, and trees yearly. This is nearly half of the nation’s excess biomass that is available to supply the bioenergy pipeline. The Great Lakes basin is also no stranger to bioenergy — we already have the most robust ethanol industry in the nation and have led the way in the use of wood chips and grasses for the production of electricity. In addition, if the Great Lakes region were isolated it would be home to the third largest economy in the world, behind the remainder of the U.S. and Japan. When its scientific, agricultural and economic capacities are considered together, the Great Lakes basin is an ideal venue to transfer new bioenergy technologies to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels from the laboratory, to the field, and ultimately to the marketplace. The citizens and culture of the Great lakes region are continually influenced by conservationists like Aldo Leopold, Gaylord Nelson and John Muir. Consequently, our Center will bring forth technologies that are economically viable, environmentally sustainable, and able to improve the quality of life on Earth.
We can see some of these new technologies on the horizon, such as the production of cellulosic ethanol, which holds great promise as one renewable biofuel. This award provides resources to attack the bottlenecks that limit wide-scale production of cellulosic ethanol. It also provides an opportunity to develop additional alternative fuels that are further away on the bioenergy horizon. Our center will use genome-based laboratory and computational methods to increase the energy density and yield of biofuel plants per acre, improve systems for processing both existing and future biomass plants, and harness microbial and chemical reactions that can increase the number, types, or yields of energy products derived from plant biomass. This integrated approach will be used to convert cellulose and other non-digestible plant biomass components into ethanol and other energy products. As a consequence, the bioenergy pipeline will no longer be absolutely dependent on plant material like corn kernels that is critical to the human and animal food chain.
The academic partners of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center also have a deep commitment to and history of excellence in the Land Grant missions of education, training and outreach. Consequently, as we solve today’s bioenergy problems, we will also be training the leaders of tomorrow’s bioenergy community. We are equally excited about developing programs to educate farmers, citizens, companies and other stakeholders on sound practices to reduce society’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Again, on behalf of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Michigan State University, and all members of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, I want to thank the Department of Energy Office of Science for their support, confidence, and as importantly, for providing the vision and resources to help us tackle society’s grand energy challenge. In addition to creating these centers as focal points for bioenergy research, you have or plan to provide millions of additional dollars to individual investigators whose activities will complement those of these Centers. We are happy to see a commitment to Centers like these and to individual research programs, since both are needed to seed the disruptive advances that will feed the bioenergy pipeline.
In my lifetime, I have seen society embark on grand scientific missions to go to the moon and to sequence the human genome. I am optimistic that today marks an initial step for society on a journey to reduce an over 100-year-long dependence on fossil fuels and to chart a path for a more sustainable energy future. I submit that ours is an equally hopeful and bold mission that can transform the face of society and the planet for future generations. I am optimistic that we can lay out a path to a brighter energy future, and I am thrilled that the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center will play a role in this next grand scientific mission.