By Jim Stafford
As printed in The Oklahoman, June 28, 2007.

The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation has won a share of a $125 million Department of Energy grant awarded to a consortium of researchers that will focus on converting plants into fuels, officials said Wednesday.

The grant will create the BioEnergy Science Center, one of three funded by the Energy Department.

Using a consortium of private and public institutions, the center will conduct basic research aimed at understanding how to convert plants, including switchgrass and poplar trees, into liquid fuels.

"One of the things that some people overlook here is that the real focus on this particular center is on cellulosic biomass as opposed to starched-base biomass from corn," said Michael A. Cawley, president and chief executive officer of the Ardmore-based Noble Foundation.

"That's really important as you look at the negative economic impacts of this big corn demand to produce ethanol.

"This is just another way to develop an alternative strategy to produce energy for our country."

The Noble Foundation's share of the grant is about $9 million over five years.

The consortium is led by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and also includes the University of Tennessee, Dartmouth College, the University of Georgia, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and companies ArborGen in Summerville, S.C., Diversa in San Diego and Mascoma in Cambridge, Mass.

Martin Keller from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory will serve as director of the bioenergy research center, which will have its headquarters at Oak Ridge.

The Noble Foundation already is heavily involved in research to convert switchgrass into an energy source, announcing a deal last year with California-based Ceres Inc. to develop new switchgrass varieties for use in biofuels.

The work that Noble scientists will do as part of the Bioenergy Science Center will differ from the deal with Ceres in that it will focus more on what Rick Dixon, director of the Plant Biology Division at the Noble Foundation, called basic research.

Seven of the foundation's 18 principal investigators will receive funding as part of the center, including Dixon, Joe Bouton, Kelly Craven, Rick Nelson, Malay Saha, Michael Udvardi and Zengyu Wang. Noble Foundation Genomics Facility Manager Yuhong Tang and senior research associate Fang Chen also will be a part of the Department of Energy funded program.

Noble Foundation researchers will address a broad spectrum of basic science issues surrounding the use of switchgrass as a significant contributor to the biofuels industry, with major emphasis on understanding how to deconstruct the cell walls of this plant to yield sugars from subsequent fermentation. They will conduct their research at the Noble Foundation's Ardmore headquarters, Dixon said.

"This is basic science trying to better understand how we can pull plant cell walls apart in order to get the sugars to fermentation for ethanol," Dixon said.

Over the past two years the Noble Foundation has been involved in ongoing efforts to assist the biofuels industry in developing new feedstocks, including:
  • Creating high-yielding bioenergy crops.
  • Developing crop production and management plans for agricultural producers.
  • Engineering feedstocks tailored to specific ethanol conversion processes.

Earlier this month, Gov. Brad Henry signed legislation that created the Oklahoma Bioenergy Center, which unites the Noble Foundation, the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University in an effort to create a flourishing bioenergy industry in Oklahoma.

"The Noble Foundation is playing a pivotal role in the creation of the biofuels industry at the state and national levels," said David Fleischaker, Oklahoma Secretary of Energy.

"The Noble Foundation's work, both in the scientific research and with the state's agricultural producers, addresses the entire value chain from basic gene discovery research to hands-on interaction with our farmers and ranchers. We are pleased to have the Noble Foundation contributing to Oklahoma's biofuels effort."

Wednesday's announcement of the bioenergy research consortium was made by U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.

This article appeared in The Oklahoman, www.newsok.com, on June 28, 2007.