27 January 2009
Biggest ever public investment in bioenergy to help provide clean, green and sustainable fuels
VIDEO FOOTAGE, IMAGES AND INFORMATION PACK AVAILABLE - SEE BELOW AND www.bbsrc.ac.uk/media.
Bioenergy research in Scotland is set to benefit from the biggest ever single UK public investment in the field, announced today by the main funding agency for the biosciences - the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
The £27M BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre has been launched to provide the science to underpin and develop the important and emerging UK sustainable bioenergy sector - and to replace the petrol in our cars with fuels derived from plants.
The University of Dundee has been named as one of the six research hubs of academic and industrial partners to benefit from the investment. The University project will work with a number of partners including the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI), the Scottish Government Rural and Environment Research and Analysis Directorate (RERAD) and the University of York.
The Dundee-led part of the Centre will concentrate on improving barley straw for lignin properties and transferring the new knowledge to other crops. Lignin is a polymer in plants that makes it difficult to access sugars which are vital for bioenergy production. The Dundee-led programme aims to alter lignin production in barley to make it easier to produce bioenergy from waste straw without reducing the quality of the crop.
'This is a very exciting collaboration that matches research excellence from each of the project partners in areas relevant to the production of `second-generation’ biofuels, those that do not impact food production,' said Professor Claire Halpin, of the College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee and head of the Dundee 'hub'.
'If we can find a way of accessing these key sugars in barley straw it would have a significant impact on the types of agricultural waste and dedicated energy crops that could be used to produce sustainable bioenergy.'
'We are using barley as model, partly due to the excellent work already done on barley at SCRI, but hopefully we will then be able to transfer results to other crops.'
Peter Gregory, Chief Executive and Institute Director of SCRI said: 'We are delighted to be involved in such an important and innovative project, which will build on our previous research work and collaborations to deliver new environmentally-friendly fuels.'
'The work of the Sustainable Bioenergy Centre will help pave the way for a significant change in energy use leading to a more secure future for both energy provision and food production.'
Sustainable bioenergy offers the potential to provide a significant source of clean, low carbon and secure energy, and to generate thousands of new ‘green collar’ jobs. It uses non-food crops, such as willow, industrial and agricultural waste products and inedible parts of crops, such as straw, and so does not take products out of the food chain.
Minister of State for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson, said: 'Investing £27 million in this new centre involves the single biggest UK public investment in bioenergy research. The centre is exactly the sort of initiative this country needs to lead the way in transforming the exciting potential of sustainable biofuels into a widespread technology that can replace fossil fuels.'
'The expertise and resources of the University of Dundee makes it well placed to make a valuable contribution to the new BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre and help to make sustainable, environmentally-friendly bioenergy a reality.'
The BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre is focussed on six research hubs of academic and industrial partners, based at each of the Universities of Cambridge, Dundee and York and Rothamsted Research and two at the University of Nottingham. Another 7 universities and institutes are involved and 15 industrial partners across the hubs are contributing around £7M of the funding. The Scottish Government is contributing up to £600,000 over the next three years to fund SCRI’s involvement in the Dundee hub’s activities in the Centre.
The Centre’s research activities will encompass many different stages of bioenergy production, from widening the range of materials that can be the starting point for bioenergy to improving the crops used by making them grow more efficiently to changing plant cell walls. The Centre will also analyse the complete economic and environmental life cycle of potential sources of bioenergy.
This means the researchers will be working to make sustainable bioenergy a practical solution by improving not only the yield and quality of non-food biomass and the processes used to convert this into biofuels but ensuring that the whole system is economically and socially viable.
BBSRC Chief Executive, Prof Douglas Kell, said: 'The UK has a world leading research base in plant and microbial science. The BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre draws together some of these world beating scientists in order to help develop technology and understanding to support the sustainable bioenergy sector. The Centre is taking a holistic systems-level approach, examining all the relevant areas of science needed for sustainable bioenergy and studying the economic and social impact of the bioenergy process.'
'By working closely with industrial partners the Centre’s scientists will be able to quickly translate their progress into practical solutions to all our benefit - and ultimately, by supporting the sustainable bioenergy sector, help to create thousands of new ‘green collar’ jobs in the UK.'
In Dundee the grant will create five new posts - three post-doctoral researchers and two technicians - for the five-year period of the grant. Professor Halpin said it would also further strengthen the growing bonds between the University and SCRI.
If covering this story please include a link to the Centre’s website - www.bsbec.bbsrc.ac.uk.
VIDEO FOOTAGE AVAILABLE ON REQUEST AND DOWNLOAD
- Video introducing BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre
- Interview footage of Lord Drayson
- Interview footage of Centre scientists
- Footage of laboratory and energy crop fields
IMAGES AVAILABLE ON REQUEST AND DOWNLOAD
- Laboratories, energy crop fields, bioenergy images, microscope images of plant structures, plants, marine wood borers and fermentation systems.
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CONTACTS
BBSRC External Relations
Matt Goode, Mobile: 07766 423 372, Tel: 01793 413299, email: matt.goode@bbsrc.ac.uk
Nancy Mendoza, Tel: 01793 413355, email: nancy.mendoza@bbsrc.ac.uk
University of Dundee
Roddy Isles, Head of Press
TEL: 01382 3849120, MOBILE: 07800 581902
r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
Notes to Editors
The BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre (BSBEC) is an innovative £27M academic-industry partnership that will help to deliver the science to underpin development in this important and emerging sector. The funding of the Centre has been guided in part by the recommendations of a review of BBSRC’s bioenergy research portfolio published in 2006. The review was chaired by then Council member, Prof Douglas Kell.
The new centre is based around six research hubs of academic and industrial partners.
BSBEC provides a focus for ensuring sustainability, widening the range of materials that can be used as feedstock (raw materials) for bioenergy, changing plant cell walls, making them more amenable to breakdown and optimising fermentation to release energy
BSBEC is made up of six hubs or programmes:
- BSBEC Perennial Bioenergy Crops Programme - optimising biomass yield and composition for sustainable biofuels. The programme aims to improve yields of fast growing trees and grasses and to make more of the plants’ carbon available for conversion into biofuels and to do this without increasing inputs such as fertilizers.
Rothamsted Research with associated programme members: Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), Imperial College London and University of Cambridge.
- BSBEC Cell Wall Sugars Programme - developing strategies to improve plants and enzymes for increased sugar release from biomass. The programme aims to better understand how sugars are locked into plant cell walls. By doing this we can select the right plants and the right enzymes to release the maximum amount of sugars for conversion to biofuels.
University of Cambridge with associated programme members: Newcastle University, Shell and Novozymes.
- BSBEC Lignocellulosic Conversion to Bioethanol (LACE) Programme - using agricultural and wood-industry wastes to create biofuels. The programme is aiming to optimise the release of sugars from plant cell walls to produce a fermentable material to produce fuels. It will also work on microbes to efficiently turn the material into fuel.
University of Nottingham with associated programme members: University of Bath, University of Surrey, BP, Bioethanol Ltd, Briggs of Burton, British Sugar, Coors Brewers, DSM, Ethanol Technology, HGCA, Pursuit Dynamics, SABMiller and Scottish Whisky Research Institute.
- BSBEC Second Generation Sustainable, Bacterial Biofuels Programme - optimising production of the more effective second generation biofuel biobutanol from non-food biomass. Biobutanol is a superior biofuel to ethanol but currently available microbes used in biobutanol production processes are inefficient, produce unwanted by-products and cannot use plant cell walls directly as a feed material. The programme aims to generate and test new bacterial strains to overcome this.
University of Nottingham with associated programme members: Newcastle University and TMO Renewables.
- BSBEC Cell Wall Lignin Programme - Improving barley straw for lignin production and transferring the new knowledge to other crops. Lignin is a polymer in plants that makes it difficult to access sugars for bioenergy production. The programme aims to alter lignin properties in barley to make it easier to produce bioenergy without reducing the quality of the crop.
University of Dundee with associated programme members: University of York, SCRI and RERAD.
- BSBEC Marine Wood Borer Enzyme Discovery Programme - New enzymes for the conversion of non-food plant biomass into biofuels from marine wood borers. Wood and straw contain polysaccharides that if converted to simple sugars could be fermented into biofuels. At the moment we do not have suitable enzymes to break down these woody materials. However, marine wood borers consume huge amounts of woody material and their guts have all the enzymes needed to break it down. The programme aims to exploit this.
University of York with associated programme members: University of Portsmouth and Syngenta Biomass Traits Group.
About BBSRC
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is the UK funding agency for research in the life sciences. Sponsored by Government, BBSRC annually invests around £420 million in a wide range of research that makes a significant contribution to the quality of life for UK citizens and supports a number of important industrial stakeholders including the agriculture, food, chemical, healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. BBSRC carries out its mission by funding internationally competitive research, providing training in the biosciences, fostering opportunities for knowledge transfer and innovation and promoting interaction with the public and other stakeholders on issues of scientific interest in universities, centres and institutes.
The Babraham Institute, Institute for Animal Health, Institute of Food Research, John Innes Centre and Rothamsted Research are Institutes of BBSRC. The Institutes conduct long-term, mission-oriented research using specialist facilities. They have strong interactions with industry, Government departments and other end-users of their research.
For more information see: www.bbsrc.ac.uk.
For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate
Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
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