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Universities to continue researching new biofuels

A University of Wisconsin-based biofuels research center is getting five more years of federal funding.

Tim Donahue is the director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He says, “The mission of the Center is to make liquid transportation fuels and chemicals. Out of non-food, crap material. It’s called lignocellulosic biomass. So we call them energy crops.”

And Donahue says farmers can potentially grow a new income stream with fewer inputs. “We’re developing new crops that we’ll be able to use to make fuels and chemicals without the need for fertilizer and without the need of pesticide. Both of those are huge sources of co2 emissions.”

The center was established in 2007 and has partners including Michigan State University.  They will receive $27.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy this year to expand their research.