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Workshop onBiotechnology for Sustainable Bioenergy

San Francisco, California - USAFebruary 21-22, 2008

EC-US Task Force on Biotechnology Research

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EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Directorate-General for ResearchDirectorate E — Biotechnologies, Agriculture and Food research Unit E2 — Biotechnologies

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European Commission

EUR 1018-5593 — EC-US Taskforce on Biotechnology Research: Workshop on Biotechnology for Sustainable Bioenergy

2008, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities

ISSN 1831-2322 (Collection EC-US Taskforce on Biotechnology Research)

1018-5593 (EUR Collection)

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EC-US TASKFORCE ON BIOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH

Workshop onBiotechnology for Sustainable Bioenergy

San Francisco, California - USAFebruary 21-22, 2008

Edited by David G. Thomassen, Kay Simmons

Maria Fernandez-Guiterrez Maurice Lex

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Directorate-General for Research Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology 2008 EUR 1018-5593 EN

LEGAL NOTICENeither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use which might be made of the following information.The views expressed in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.A great deal of additional information on the European Union is available on the Internet. It can be accessed through the Europa server (http://europa.eu).Cataloguing data can be found at the end of this publication.Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2008

ISBN 978-92-79-10010-9DOI 10.2777/20912

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PREFACE Since 1990, the EC-US Task Force on Biotechnology Research has been coordinating

transatlantic efforts to guide and exploit the ongoing revolution in biotechnology and the

life sciences. The Task Force was established in June 1990 by the European Commission

and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. This mandate has been

renewed three times.

The Task Force has acted as an effective forum for discussion, for coordination and for

developing new ideas for the last 16 years.

Task Force members are European Commission and US Government science and

technology administrators who meet annually to enhance communication across the

Atlantic, and to encourage collaborative research. Through sponsoring workshops, and

other activities, the Task Force also brings together scientific leaders and early career

researchers from both sides of the Atlantic to forecast research challenges and

opportunities and to promote better links between researchers. Over the years, by keeping

a focus on the future of science, the Task Force has played a key role in establishing a

diverse range of emerging scientific fields, including biodiversity research,

neuroinformatics, genomics, nanobiotechnology, neonatal immunology, and

transkingdom molecular biology.

At Task Force workshops, a small number of leading scientists, each operating in

different but related areas, come together for a few days in informal surroundings. These

workshops seek to look into the future of emerging fields of science and answer the

question of whether international collaboration in a certain field would be useful.

Workshop participants often represent different disciplines, which need to be integrated

in order to move forward in a new area of science. Drawing on these differences in

research backgrounds, EC-US Task Force workshops are full of surprising conclusions

and they can produce some inspiring contrasts.

An US-EC Workshop on “Applications of Molecular Biology for the Production of

Plants for Biobased Products and Bioenergy” was held in April 2004 at the USDA-ARS

Western Regional Research Center, USA. Follow-up activities from that workshop led to

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the development of “flagship” projects for “Plant Cell Walls”, “Plant Oils”, and

“Biopolymers”. Subsequently, an international project EPOBIO was supported through

the European Union’s 6th Framework Research Programme together with the USDA,

which built on the work of the EC/US Taskforce on Biotechnology Research.

During the Plenary Session of the Task Force in July 2007, under the co-chairmanship of

Dr. Kathie L. Olsen, Deputy Director, NSF and Mr. Christian Patermann, Director for

Biotechnology, Agriculture and Food, DG Research, European Commission (EC) it was

decided to organize a Workshop on Biotechnology for Sustainable Bioenergy in early

2008 in San Francisco (see Annex I for workshop proposal). The workshop was planned

to include new bioenergy technologies and new institutions such as the new DOE

Bioenergy Centers in the US and other newly established projects in the EC and US. The

coordinators of the activity were Dr. David Thomassen (US DoE), Dr. Kay Simmons (US

USDA), Maria Fernandez Guiterrez (EC), and Mauric Lex (EC).

Timothy Hall, EC Chairperson Kathy L. Olsen, US Chairperson

EC-US Task Force on Biotechnology Research

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface .................................................................................................................................3

Table of Contents.................................................................................................................5

Introduction .........................................................................................................................6

Executive Summary.............................................................................................................9

Session 1 - Energy Feedstocks ..........................................................................................10

Session 2 - Advanced Biotechnologies for Biomass-to-Bioenergy...................................15

Session 3 - Socio-economic and Environmental Challenges ............................................22

Annex I - Participant Abstracts .........................................................................................28

Annex II - Workshop Proposal ..........................................................................................61

Annex III - Workshop Agenda ..........................................................................................62

Annex IV - Field Trip Agenda ..........................................................................................65

Annex IV – Participants ....................................................................................................67

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INTRODUCTION

Biomass is a versatile renewable energy source with high potential to contribute to the

energy needs of modern society in short to medium term. While other renewable sources

can be used for the production of heat and electricity, biomass is the only renewable

source that can also be converted into a transportation fuel that is compatible with the

current existing infrastructure. Furthermore, biomass is a renewable raw material for the

production of bioproducts like chemicals and materials.

Alternative fuels from renewable cellulosic biomass, plant stalks, trunks, stems, and

leaves, aim to significantly reduce dependence on imported oil and decrease the

environmental impacts of energy use. Ethanol and other biofuels from cellulosic biomass

are renewable alternatives that could increase domestic production of transportation fuels,

revitalize rural economies, and reduce carbon dioxide and pollutant emissions.

Although cellulosic ethanol production has been demonstrated on a pilot scale, attaining a

cost-effective, commercial-scale cellulosic biofuel industry will require transformational

science that can significantly streamline current production processes. The biofuel

industry will require new and expanded feedstocks that include new energy crop

varieties. Woodchips, grasses, cornstalks, and other cellulosic biomass are widely

abundant but more difficult to break down into sugars than cereals (corn, wheat, etc), a

principal source of fuel ethanol production today. Biological research is key to

developing new and expanded feedstocks (see examples of USDA and DOE supported

feedstock research on page 11 and from the EC Seventh Research Framework

Programme (FP7) on page 23).

Biological research is also critical for accelerating the deconstruction of cellulosic

biomass into sugars that can be converted to biofuels (see Figure on page 16, Cellulosic

Biofuel Production Steps and Biological Research Challenges from Biomass

to Biofuels).

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The production of biofuels from cellulosic biomass offers not only greater potential in

terms of expanding the feedstock bases but also results in improved energy and

environmental performance.

Cellulosic ethanol is therefore one of the cornerstones to our energy needs, but there are

other alternatives, both in terms of feedstock and end-product which also hold great

promise.

Aquatic biomass, such as algae, does not compete either with arable land for food

production. Algae can be used for the production of a variety of products, ranging from

cosmetics, biodiesel and hydrogen.

In a longer term perspective, the production of hydrogen directly from solar energy and

water by means of an artificial photosynthesis would provide an almost unlimited source

of energy. One of the scientific approaches that has been explored is to study and learn

from the natural processes and to develop chemistry where the absolute key reactions

from nature are mimicked but not directly copied.

The latest advances in biotechnology are making use of synthetic biology for the possible

radical modification of organisms or components from organisms - even designing them

from scratch - to produce tailor-made biofuels with optimal energy content and blending

potential with gasoline.

The biotechnology revolution of the last 25 years offers great promise for solving many

of the scientific and technical challenges associated with the development of bioenergy

and biofuels as a large-scale, sustainable option to our fossil-based energy systems and

transportation fuels. Building on advances in DNA technologies resulting from the

Human Genome Project, new systems biology research programs are being developed

internationally that are creating a new generation of biological research. These new

research approaches involve the bringing together of scientists from diverse fields to

understand the complex biology underlying solutions to the bioenergy challenges. New

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interdisciplinary research communities are being created, as are knowledge bases and

scientific and computational resources critical to advancing large-scale, genome-based

biology.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This US-EC Workshop focused on three key challenges facing the growth and

development of bioenergy as a sustainable alternative to today’s reliance on petroleum-

based liquid transportation fuels: bioenergy feedstocks, advanced biotechnologies for

biomass-to-bioenergy, and socio-economic and environmental challenges. Participants

discussed scientific challenges, research priorities and knowledge gaps, recommendations

for biotechnology research, and opportunities for US-EC collaboration.

Scientific challenges included:

• Need for fundamental understanding of plant cell wall synthesis, morphology, physiology and composition, strategies for their modification, maximizing yields, and adapting bioenergy crops for use in diverse environments.

• Maximizing the benefits of intellectual property while minimizing its impact on research collaboration.

• Scaling developments and technologies made in the laboratory to demonstration and production scales.

• Maximizing benefits of biotechnology and sustainable bioenergy development while minimizing impacts on communities, environments, and resources.

The identification of research priorities and knowledge gaps needed to address these

scientific challenges resulted in a range of recommendations for both biotechnology

research and opportunities for US-EC collaboration, including:

Research

• New resources, tools, and interdisciplinary interactions needed for the development and characterization of next generation biomass crops.

• Development of standards and benchmarks to improve technologies and processes for biomass conversion to biofuels.

• Development of bioenergy crops and farming practices that minimize competition with food crops, use of resources such as water, and inputs such as fertilizers.

Collaboration

• Exchange and training of students, postdoctoral fellows, and staff • Development of Grand Challenge competitions, with prizes, for synthetic biology

• Development of joint, standardized methods for life cycle analysis

This workshop report will help guide the future of bioenergy research in the US, the EC,

and through joint collaborations.

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SESSION 1

Energy Feedstocks

Introduction

A core barrier and challenge in the use of biomass feedstocks as resources for production

of biofuels is cellulosic-biomass recalcitrance to processing to ethanol and other biofuels.

Biomass is composed of nature’s most ready energy source, sugars, but they are locked in

a complex polymer composite exquisitely created to resist biological and chemical

degradation. Key to energizing a new biofuel industry based on conversion of cellulose

(and hemicelluloses) to biofuels is to understand plant cell-wall chemical and physical

structures—how they are synthesized and can be deconstructed. With this knowledge,

innovative energy crops—plants specifically designed for industrial processing to

biofuel—can be developed concurrently with new biology-based treatment and

conversion methods. Recent advances in science and technological capabilities,

especially those from the nascent discipline of systems biology, promise to accelerate and

enhance this development. Resulting technologies will create a fundamentally new

process and biorefinery paradigm that will enable an efficient and economic industry for

converting plant biomass to liquid fuels. These key barriers and suggested research

strategies were discussed in this session.

Scientific challenges

The development and use of biomass feedstocks for optimized conversion to bioenergy raises a number of scientific grand challenges that were discussed in this session. They include:

• Understanding plant cell wall synthesis, morphology, physiology and composition

• Targeting desired changes in cell wall composition to make the biomass more amenable to processing including improving feedstock composition for optimized conversion and different end-products

• Achieving significant yield increases within an environmentally sustainable framework

• Improved resource use efficiency, e.g., nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, sulphur, water, light

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Feedstock Development Research (Supported by USDA and DOE)

Molecular biologist, Gautam Sarath, USDA- ARS, Lincoln, NE, loads vials containing hydrolyzed switchgrass cell-wall samples for analysis of lignin content by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Geneticist Sara Hake, USDA-ARS Plant Gene Expression Center, Albany, CA, checks experimental corn for genetic change in search of plant architecture genes. Technician Nick Baker (left) and geneticist Michael Casler, USDA-ARS, Madsen, WI, analyze DNA markers of switchgrass plants using capillary gel electrophoresis.

Geneticist Michael Casler harvests switchgrass seed as part of a breeding program to develop new cultivars.

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• Adapting candidate bioenergy crops to different environments and stresses • Improved tolerance of bioenergy crops to pests and diseases

• Adaptation of bioenergy crops to a wider variety of growth conditions, e.g., day length, climate

• Maintaining bioenergy crop yield stability across unpredictable environments • Efficient and cost-effective harvestability, supply chain and agronomic practices

Research Priorities / Knowledge Gaps

Developing research strategies to address these grand challenges is limited by the

availability of key technologies and resources. Current technology and resource

limitations discussed included:

• Inadequacy of the analytical toolbox for studying and characterizing cell walls • Requirement of new instrumentation for whole plant phenotyping and for

measuring physiological processes in real time • Genome complexity of next generation biomass crops such as switchgrass and

Miscanthus making sequence analysis and manipulation difficult • Need to develop a full range of genetic resources and methods for biomass

crops • Inadequacy of current data management, integration and analysis pipelines

Prioritization of research depends, in part, on the specific biomass crops chosen for use.

As a result, there was a discussion of the strategies that should be used to choose

bioenergy crops. The following possible criteria for selection were identified during the

discussions:

• Potential for high yield of efficiently convertible biomass

• Meets a standard yardstick of sustainability criteria- high net C capture, adaptability, nitrogen use efficiency, water use efficiency

• Has useful genetic diversity • Potential for multiple uses- food, feed and fuel

• Harvestability (compact crowns, thicker stems, ease of harvest) and agronomic traits (i.e,, seed germination ability, dense stands, water stress tolerance, reduced flowering)

• Minimal impacts on potential land use and ecological/biodiversity issues

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There was also a discussion on current and candidate bioenergy crops within the

context of potential US-EC collaboration. Although no effort was made to reach a

consensus, the following feedstocks were discussed depending on the desired use:

• Lignocellulosic feedstocks o Maize, sorghum, wheat, rice, sugar cane, switchgrass, reed canary grass,

Miscanthus, poplar, willow, eucalyptus • Potential lipid feedstocks? Sustainability?

o Oilseed rape/canola, oil palm o Jatropha - research is at an early stage and genetic material is being

characterized • Other crops/ novel bioenergy crops

o Cassava, other?

Recommendations for Biotechnology Research

First order recommendations for biotechnology research included:

• Development and implementation of next generation sequencing DNA strategies for complex grass genomes

• Development and broad availability of common genomic/genetic resources (markers, maps, mutants) and common genotyping platforms for the major bioenergy crops

• Development of high-throughput genotyping and phenotyping assays

• Development of publicly- accessible genomics portals for genomic data, annotations and comparative analyses from distributed sources

• Development of innovative solutions for data management, integration and analyses

• Creative interactions involving chemists, nano-technologists and engineers to develop novel tools and approaches to cell wall analysis

• Development of analytical platforms for analysis of lignocellulosic components for optimising decomposition and conversion

• Establishment of joint larger-scale facilities for demonstration projects

Finally, there was a discussion about the overall organization of bioenergy science to best

meet the many research and technology challenges. Strategies for optimization included:

• Develop shared larger-scale facilities for demonstration projects

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• Promote the development of centers with critical mass that can drive multidisciplinary research and promote necessary cohesion

• Facilitate interactions between public sector bioenergy centers across the Atlantic • Promote interactions with private sector activities

Opportunities for US/EC Collaborations

In addition to the overall identification and recommendation of scientific challenges and

research needs, several opportunities were identified for productive, near-term US-EC

collaborations. These include:

• Establishing access to resources and facilities (e.g., EC Integrated Infrastructure

Initiative - I3 programs) • Exchanging and training of post-docs

• Promulgating grand challenges through the web (with prizes) • Developing bi-lateral collaborations

• Developing interactions with industrial partners • Refining common objectives and establish joint projects

• Developing a switchgrass/Miscanthus exchange platform: knowledge, experience, genetic material, students

• Collaborating on socioeconomic aspects of bioenergy crop development and use

During the discussion, it was noted that US investments in plant genomics, particularly

bioenergy plant genome sequencing, has been very valuable to researchers

internationally, including the EU.

Many of the issues and opportunities discussed throughout the workshop involved the

potential for intellectual property development. As more academic and industrial

organizations and scientists become engaged in bioenergy research the challenges of

intellectual property will need to be considered and resolved. Dealing with IP issues may

complicate come collaborative research projects in applied areas. However, this

complication does not take away from the importance of applied bioenergy research or

the even broader need for and opportunity associated with fundamental biology research.

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SESSION 2

Advanced Biotechnologies for Processing Biomass-to-Bioenergy

Introduction

Bio-energy has developed quickly from traditional family wood-fired stoves into a

versatile and viable contributor to the total energy mix of heat, power and transport fuels.

Driving forces for this development are security of energy supply, strategic independence

of fossil resources, CO2 abatement, cost competition, rural development, and, more and

more evident, it is one of the few short-term options to meet increasing energy

consumption, in particular in the transport sector. In addition, the role of biomass as a

renewable feedstock for a range of chemicals and materials manufacturing industries is

revisited, as new technologies become available and economic. At the same time, solar

and other energy alternatives are developing and overall energy use is becoming more

electricity based. There is an increasing need for technology development and deeper

insight in the biomass conversion processes, of which industrial biotechnology is key and

the target of this workshop.

The underlying scientific field is broadening very quickly. Classical microbiology is

expanding towards metabolic pathway/systems engineering, functional genomics and

proteomics, and from single organisms to systems biology. The biological sciences are

linked with chemistry towards biomimetics and synthetic biology, and with physics

towards biophysics and nano-biotechnology. The field is becoming more and more data

intensive and the need for open and reliable data bases is growing rapidly.

The current session covered both (A) biorefinery-type research activities involving

industrial biotechnology which is much application and implementation driven, and (B)

emerging fields such as synthetic biology and artificial photosynthesis, which are much

further from application. The dynamics, players, risks and overall situation are fairly

different, but scientific and technological challenges are significant in both cases.

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Cellulosic Biofuel Production Steps and Biological Research Challenges.This figure depicts some key processing steps in an artist’s conception of a future large-scale facility for transforming cellulosic biomass (plant fibers) into biofuels. Three areas where focused biological research can lead to much lower costs and increased productivity include developing crops dedicated to biofuel production (see step 1), engineering enzymes that deconstruct cellulosic biomass (see steps 2 and 3), and engineering microbes and developing new microbial enzyme systems for industrial-scale conversion of biomass sugars into ethanol and other biofuels or bioproducts (see step 4). Biological research challenges associated with each production step are summarized in the right portion of the figure. From: Bioenergy Research Centers: An Overview of the Science, U.S. Department of Energy, February 2008. DOE/SC-0104.

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Scientific challenges A diverse set of scientific challenges was identified by the workshop participants that

impact the conversion of biomass to biofuels. The following discussion is not intended to

provide a comprehensive overview of current and anticipated challenges, research targets,

and programs being carried out in the US and Europe. Rather, it focuses on some priority

areas that were discussed during the workshop.

• A significant challenge and opportunity that impacts scientists across the industrial and academic sectors with relevance to both fundamental research and scientific collaboration is Intellectual Property (IP). While not specifically a scientific challenge it certainly is driven by and has a strong influence on science. Successful resolution of IP issues in any given research area can and will dramatically affect scientific progress.

• Due to the complexity, diversity, and heterogeneity of biological materials, especially biomass, comparison of scientific results across experiments, between experiments, and over time also presents a significant scientific challenge in many areas of science including bioenergy research.

• A challenge unique to the biomass to biofuels problem is the issue of scale-up. Research methods and approaches ideally suited for the conversion of biomass to biofuels at the laboratory bench are not necessarily ideal when challenged with scaling to the demonstration or even production scale. The scale-up issue is a significant challenge that requires both engineering and scientific solutions.

• Large scale production of biofuels will require diverse feedstocks that are grown and available regionally or even locally so that the conversion of feedstocks to fuels will not be a one-size-fits-all strategy. Developing, in parallel, efficient conversion approaches for diverse feedstocks represents a significant scientific and technical challenge.

• The optimal use of the biomass feedstock will require the development of improved biochemical and thermochemical conversion technologies and their integration.

• Synthetic biology represents both a new arena for scientific research and a significant scientific challenge to harness the remarkable potential of this new area of biotechnology for biofuels production while being sensitive to and aware of potential societal concerns and biological risks.


Increasingly competitive field

Intellectual Property (IP) constraints on research and collaboration offer a practical

challenge for scientists across the industrial and academic sectors. Bioenergy is an

increasingly competitive field. Today’s biotechnology industry harvests research efforts

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of the past 10-20 years, since translation of laboratory research via pilots and

demonstration towards commercial scale requires 5-20 years. Today, bioenergy (and bio-

chemicals) development is fully focused on 2nd generation or lignocellulosic feedstocks.

The field is becoming increasingly competitive and industrial and academic players are

teaming up in larger public-private consortia with ambitious yet focused research agendas

and IP arrangements. This creates some practical constraints to collaborations in IP-

sensitive areas.

Standardization and benchmarking

There is a need for standardization and benchmarking. Due to the complexity, diversity

and heterogeneity of biological material, comparison of scientific results is often difficult

or even impossible. This is especially relevant at the interface with raw materials as

derived from dedicated energy crops as well as agro and forestry residue streams. Also at

the level of biocatalysts and microbial cells, there is a great need for high quality data

bases and collections. A conventional role can be found here for national collections of

organisms, cells, germplasm, and other biological resources. That conventional role

however, is increasingly challenged by a growing number of privately owned and

proprietary collections. This aspect is also challenged by new developments such as

metagenomics where biological activities are traced without direct link to a specific

(micro)organism. Conventional collections or databases are not equipped for this

situation, but scientific developments depend on accessibility to such.

Improved scientific base

Many of today’s application oriented programs are driven by putting knowledge to work

to create economic success and address challenges. This is especially true for public-

private partnerships, with a substantial role for industry. Whereas this trend is very

beneficial to boost a Knowledge-Based BioEconomy, there is an increasing need to

develop deeper insights into the underlying (bio)molecular and cellular processes and

structures. Here, understanding the vast space of molecules, biocatalysts and organisms

requires a tremendous effort, that merits a transatlantic cooperation in fundamental

collaborative research programs in basic biological sciences.

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Demonstration and pilot plants

A number of bioenergy solutions to fuels and chemicals manufacturing are showing

promising results in the laboratory. There is a growing need to demonstrate these at a

relevant scale. It was felt among the US-EC Workshop participants that larger scale

facilities at the level of pilot plants in an open innovation setting will become very useful

to demonstrate these technologies, and promote them. Clearly such efforts will take place

within private initiatives, but a more open setting can help also small and medium-sized

enterprises and public-private consortia to bring attractive options to the next and

commercial stage.

Scale-up and sustainability

Biomass production is more ‘democratically’ distributed in the sense that plant growth is

much more wide-spread than typical fossil resources can be found and recovered. At the

same time, there are many factors to be considered for the large scale use of biomass for

energy production: transportation of biomass in its native form over prolonged distances

for centralized processing, negative effects of CO2 abatement, net energy-per-hectare

yields, nutrient and organic C-balance, and local income opportunities. All of these

factors point to the benefit of investigating scientific and technological options that favor

localized or distributed (pre)processing towards smaller volumes of platform molecules

with optional centralized further processing to final products. Also the efficient recycling

of nutrients (N, S, P, metals) and water close to the biomass production site would

substantially reduce the footprint of the biobased production and improve its cost

effectiveness. Technological solutions need to be found that overcome the typical scale-

down problems associated with commodities manufacturing. Breakthroughs here may

also find their way towards developing countries and improve local income positions.

Industrial biotechnologies with relatively mild processing conditions seem to offer a good

starting point for such an approach. This area benefits from an integrated approach from

industrial biotechnology, process engineering, logistics and nano-sciences.

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Synthetic biology challenges

The biological sciences move quickly and become more and more integrated with

molecular sciences and physics. In essence, the collective field is moving towards

molecular and biological information technology. Advanced biotechnological tools (e.g.

functional genomics, metagenomics) assist to identify desired functionalities in concrete

or existing (micro) organisms that can be improved or designed for the production of

target molecules, e.g. fuels, enzymes. Joining the proper building blocks can generate

new biocatalysts (enzymes or organisms that can produce (non-natural) bio-inspired

molecules and /or structures with useful pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, materials or fuel

properties. Examples of this could be artificial photosynthesis and synthetic biocatalyst

design. This field is wide open for new and unforeseen developments. The field of

synthetic biology may find a place in the biorefinery concepts or contribute to it, but it

can also lead to biomass-less or plant-less solutions with bio-inspired technologies


In most cases, IP-arrangements that allow open publications and substantial scientific

contributions are expected through scientists involved in these consortia. Efforts should

be made within the academic and industrial research communities to make full use of IP

while at the same time maximizing opportunities for scientific collaboration.

There is a need for standardization and benchmarking. Across the range of biomass to

biofuels research activity there is a growing need for more bench-marking and

standardization in analytical methodologies, sampling, tools and reference materials. For

open scientific research, as much data as possible should be made available and

mechanisms should be in place to guarantee reliability and consistency of data.

Although the focus of this workshop was on biotechnology for biofuels, the participants

recognized the value and importance of thermochemical conversion as a method that

should not be forgotten in the excitement of biotechnology-based approaches. In order to

create more options for future biofuels industries, further development of these non-

biological approaches is advisable. A better interface is required between all (potentially)

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contributing scientific fields such as industrial biotechnology, chemocatalysis and

process/energy technology. This is not easily achieved since the various research

communities are fairly fragmented.

Given the required scale of biorefineries, the need for industrial level utilities and

facilities, sufficient logistics, flexibility with respect to potential demonstration projects,

and integration in industrial environments with good logistics for a multitude of bio-

feedstocks and products should be considered and given priority when designing

experiments for potential scale-up.

Biotechnology, including the use of synthetic biology, offers great promise for the

development of new biocatalysts.


Proposals were made for:

• a joint (virtual) US-EU Bioenergy Standardization Institute, where key laboratories or institutes could organise round robin tests, propose standard procedures and distribute tasks.

• a joint US-EU program on Integrative Bio/Chemo Technologies focused at stimulating transatlantic collaborations to inspire and speed progress in this complex integrative effort.

• development of a joint technology roadmap, that also is regularly updated. It would be significant to find means to monitor progress in the development and implementation of a biobased economy in US, EU and worldwide for instance by jointly developing a “Bioenergy Barometer.”

• academic exchange program of students and staff at all levels, especially in the field of synthetic biology.

• a transatlantic Grand Challenges program for synthetic biology with significant rewards and prizes that allow winners to bring their ideas or proposals to a next stage, scientifically or with respect to implementation.

• joint, “unbound” programs in synthetic biology that allow feasibility studies for (very) high risk type of projects. Given the high risk, evaluation should be kept at a minimum.

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SESSION 3

Socio-economic and Environmental Challenges

Introduction

The use of biotechnology to solve scientific and technical issues arising from our

increased reliance on bioenergy raise a variety of socio-economic and environmental

challenges and opportunities. Biotechnology can improve both the sustainability of

bioenergy systems by increasing the fitness, adaptation, yield, and quality of bioenergy

crops and their subsequent conversion to biofuels. The use of biotechnology also raises

issues that need both scientific and societal discussion and resolution. Many of the

research activities and opportunities associated with bioenergy feedstocks and feedstock

conversion were discussed in Sessions 1 and 2 of this workshop. This summary of

Session 3 identifies some of the future research needs and opportunities for collaboration

related to the socio-economic and environmental challenges raised by the development of

bioenergy systems and the use of biotechnology to develop and improve those systems.

Scientific challenges

The greatest scientific challenges resulting from this workshop likely lie at the interface

of the production of new, large volume energy commodities and the socio-economic and

environmental concerns raised. The use of biotechnology to help solve various scientific

challenges from agriculture to medicine sees varying degrees of acceptance or rejection

around the world. The use of biotechnology to develop or engineer isolated enzymes used

in a biofuel production plant is far less likely to generate local or national concern than is

the planting of feedstocks developed using various biotechnology strategies. The research

priorities, recommendations for research, and opportunities for US-EC collaborations

identified below will provide the information needed for individuals, communities, and

countries to make scientifically informed decisions about the large or small role that

biotechnology can and will play in their own use and development of tomorrow’s

bioenergy industries.

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FP7 FP7 -- Specific Programme Cooperation Specific Programme Cooperation –– Food, Agriculture and BiotechnologyFood, Agriculture and Biotechnology

Activity 2.3. 2.3. Life sciences, biotechnology and biochemistry for sustainable non-food products and processes

• Novel sources of biomass and bioproducts

• Marine and fresh-water

biotechnology • Industrial biotechnology • Biorefinery • Environmental

biotechnology • Emerging trends in

biotechnology

Domestication and development of new energy crops including perennial grasses will

raise other scientific challenges. These include risk analyses of plant species and traits to

assess environmental impacts and sustainability. Issues include possible effects on native

populations, outcrossing and gene flow.


As noted above, informed decisions about future uses of bioenergy and about the use of

biotechnology to increase the efficiency, reduce the environmental impacts, and reduce

the costs of biofuel production and use, require broad scientific knowledge far beyond the

science of bioenergy feedstock production and conversion to biofuels. An informed

dialogue on the environmental and socio-economic challenges, concerns, benefits, and

opportunities requires research on topics that include:

• Soil degradation: erosion, desertification, salinization, and drought

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• Greenhouse gasses and ammonia emissions • Available land base for agriculture and bioenergy crops on a global scale

• Water abstraction and depletion effects and competition for water • Maintenance of biodiversity, semi-natural habitats, and high-nature-value

farmland • Reliable data on the economics of bioenergy production

• Impacts on food prices; of food vs. fuel competition; on-farm income and incentives

• Climate change and its effect on agriculture • Availability, access, stability, utilization of feed and fuel

• Balance between sustainable development, rural development, and traditional cultures


A wide and diverse range of research needs were discussed. While many of these have

specific biotechnology solutions others do not. Given the broad potential for

biotechnology to provide solutions to challenges in the bioenergy pipeline from feedstock

development to sustainability to harvestability and conversion to biofuels, some of the

research needs identified are important to provide a context for identifying and discussing

the environmental and socio-economic benefits and concerns raised by the use of

biotechnology in the development of biofuels.

• Optimization of bioenergy crops for local environments, managements, and societies. Distributed and centralized conversion plants. Minimum scales that are realistic for biomass conversion to energy. Given the cost of transporting biomass feedstocks even short distances, bioenergy refineries of the future will likely be local operations that use locally or at least regionally grown feedstocks. The diversity of ecosystems across Europe and the United States will require the development and use of diverse feedstocks for local environments. While biotechnology and new feedstocks can help solve many of the challenges associated with the development and use of local feedstocks, i.e., the benefits, this diversity of solutions may also raise a diversity of concerns, many of which will be unique to specific regions or environments.

• Estimation of practical/real-world yields. Biotechnology can be used to greatly increase both feedstock and biofuel yields but these potential increases need to be

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based on accurate and reliable understanding of yields using current feedstocks and technologies.

• Plant breeding and production research to optimize plant traits. Both conventional and biotechnology-assisted feedstock breeding and production can be used to optimize plant traits. The balance between these approaches will, in part, be determined by local or national dialogues and views on the environmental and socio-economic benefits and concerns raised by the use of biotechnology in the development of biofuels.

• Identification, definition, quantification, and value of high-nature-value farmland. The current food versus fuel debate includes discussions of the use of farm products for food or as feedstocks for biofuels and decisions about land use for growing food versus feedstocks. This will continue to be a critical discussion in the future as bioenergy industries scale up. Biotechnology can impact this debate through the development of bioenergy crops capable of growing efficiently on lands not currently used for farming thereby increasing the total amount of high-nature-high-value farmland available.

• Development of environmentally oriented farming practices for food and fuel. Value should be identified and placed on the environmental benefits from the development and use of biofuels. Biofuels practices need to become well integrated into the rural landscape.

• Development of mixed land use practices using perennials and low-input systems. Low input perennial crops can reduce fertilizer use, increase sequestration of soil carbon, and reduce the creation of atmospheric aerosols. Biotechnology can be used to develop and improve perennial feedstocks.

• Imbalance between R&D for conversion (90%) and feedstock production (10%). Genomics-enabled plant breeding can impact the entire bioenergy pipeline from feedstocks to biofuels. Decisions, by scientists and funding agencies, need to be made on the most efficient and productive balance of funding.

• Develop feedstocks that do not compete for arable lands (e.g. algae) or that can utilize degraded land, including utilization of agricultural waste products. As noted above, the food versus fuel debate has heightened awareness of the need to minimize the impacts of feedstock production on food production. Choice of feedstocks and energy crops will have an impact. Biotechnology can be used to speed development and improvement of feedstocks that can be produced using currently non-arable lands. Biotechnology can also be used to improve methods for the use of nontraditional feedstocks such as agricultural or even municipal waste.

• Quantification of costs of biomass production and conversion. Identify limiting factors. Before significant, new investments in feedstock development or conversion are made in the name of increasing their efficiency and reducing their costs, reliable estimates of current costs are needed. These reliable estimates can be used to make informed decisions about where investments, including biotechnology investments, are needed and will have the greatest impact.

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• Greenhouse gas balances of bioenergy crops and whole bioenergy pathways. Just as reliable estimates of bioenergy costs are needed to plan future investments, including biotechnology investments, we also need reliable estimates of the greenhouse gas balance from the bioenergy pipeline.

• Public access to pilot-plant/demonstration data for modeling and systems analysis. As previously discussed during this workshop, public/private research interactions and partnerships, in part driven or impeded by intellectual property concerns, are important to the scientific enterprise, including bioenergy. Efforts should be made to make research results and data, from the test tube to the demonstration plant, as widely available and accessible as possible to maximize opportunities for scientific advances.


Seven key areas for collaboration between US and EC scientists and organizations were

identified in this session.

1. Develop standardized methods for life cycle analyses (LCA) for all aspects of biofuel development from “field to fuel” as collaborative efforts, taking account of current international activities. These analyses must be expanded to include social impacts and both direct and indirect land-use changes at different geographic scales.

2. Assess impacts of policies on local, regional, and global scales. Share experiences and identify commonalities that can form the basis of potential global policies and agreements.

a. At farm level, exchange experiences with biomass cropping within existing farming systems and monitor their impacts on environment and farm economy in order to identify sustainable biomass cropping systems.

b. At local levels, ensure equitable access to resources, community involvement in decision-making, and benefit sharing.

c. At regional/national levels, evaluate the effectiveness of policy implementations, compare effects and effectiveness of policies, monitor trends in crops and feedstocks and their impacts on rural and urban economies and the environment.

d. At the global level, establish common systems of carbon trading, develop comparable and measurable sustainability standards, and oversee traceability and trading systems.

3. Incorporate biotechnological advancements into LCA studies to more effectively demonstrate the value of biotechnology and the management of associated risks. Use LCA to inform biotechnologists of potentials for positive social, economic, and environmental impacts. Become more proactive in communication and management of the benefits and potential risks of biotechnology.

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4. Explore common pathways to improve technology transfer of new technologies on a global scale, i.e., between the US and EU and to developing countries. Collaborate on the development of effective and locally adapted biotechnology as an aid to improve bio-based energy industries in developing countries, including food vs. fuel solutions.

5. Recognizing the challenges of intellectual property, share data on pilot and demonstration plants to improve joint LCA efforts with realistic energy production data.

6. Exchange information on public perceptions and risk assessments related to the application of biotechnology for bioenergy production. Share success stories and results of LCA studies that demonstrate positive impacts of biotechnology on socio-economic and environmental challenges.

7. Jointly develop mechanisms for assessing sustainability of bio-based energy production systems. Adopt a widely acceptable definition for the word “sustainable”. Determine the best methods for measuring sustainability of a system. Determine how to certify sustainability.

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Annex I

Abstracts from Presenters

Discovery Approaches for Biomass Conversion to Bioenergy: the Potential to Mitigate Climate Change.

Rob Brown and Eric Mathur

Synthetic Genomics Inc. La Jolla CA. Exploration of biodiversity for commercially valuable genetic and biochemical resources does not automatically constitute exploitation of developing countries or the misuse natural resources. The object of biodiscovery should be the enrichment of knowledge and the acknowledgement and compensation of the biotope whence the sample originated. Many expeditions undertaken by various institutes have obeyed this mantra. However past experiences of biopiracy by neglectful academics, pharmaceutical companies and others ensure that contemporary bioprospector adheres to global biodiversity treaties. In addition, these modern approaches strive to protect habitat and fund conservation activities and to bolster economic, medical and agricultural advances. In the past much of these efforts have focused on the need to combat disease and sustain growing human numbers. The biotechnology revolution has led to the development and refinement of molecular methods which not only have enabled solutions for a myriad of applied industrial processes, but moreover, has resulted in the creation of a new set of sophisticated molecular tools which microbial ecologists can utilize to unravel the mysteries of our complex biosphere. Today, we are leveraging these tools within the evolving technologies of metagenomics, informatics and synthetic biology towards bioenergy demands. We consider these as key strengths in the war against climate change. The development of microbial consortia and green biochemistry combined with reduced carbon emission technology is a primary step to addressing global energy and environmental challenges. This presentation shall address some of these discoveries, elaborating on their use as potential technologies for biomass conversion to bioenergy, in the hope to stimulate cooperation and prospective opportunities.

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Improving degradation of biomass by improving cell wall digestibility

Felice Cervone

Dipartimento di Biologia Vegetale, Università di Roma La Sapienza

Plant cell walls comprise a significant proportion of the biomass on Earth. They are composed of a heterogeneous matrix of sugar polymers associated with other components, like lignin and proteins. A key step for utilizing plant biomass to produce energy is the initial degradation of plant cell walls providing fermentable, simple sugar monomers. Enzymatic hydrolysis is considered the most promising, environmentally friendly technology available for the conversion of plant raw materials into usable products or fermentable sugars. The major bottleneck for the industrial scale-up of this process is represented by the heterogeneity of plant cell walls and their recalcitrance to hydrolysis: that is, the natural resistance of plant cell walls to enzymatic deconstruction. Digestibility may be enhanced by lowering lignin composition (though lignin is required for mechanical strength), increasing levels of hexose-containing polymers, weakening cross-linkages between wall components, and altering the levels of polymer modifications, such as esterification, to promote enzyme accessibility and digestibility. In addition, digestibility can be improved by altering those components that act as a “glue” of cell walls, i.e. pectin and hemicellulose in middle lamellae and primary cell walls. Knowledge on the chemistry of cell walls, CWDEs (cell wall-degrading enzymes) and inhibitors can be used to develop new technologies and breeding strategies to improve the breakdown of plant cell walls. We study those cell wall parameters that most likely correlate to cell wall degradability including the relative content of different structural components and the presence of endogenous CWDEs and their inhibitors. High throughput analysis of cell wall degradability in natural crop accessions, followed by cell wall characterization, may allow us to identify cell wall parameters that significantly correlate with degradability. In addition, we want to identify new sources of enzymes in microbial collections. To overcome recalcitrant structures, CWDEs with improved characteristics (greater activity, lack of inhibition, wider pH range, thermostability) must be isolated and characterized. Structure-function studies of selected available and novel enzymes may provide the basis for targeted mutagenesis experiments aimed to enhance the desired characteristics and generate novel, tailor-made proteins to be tested for their performance in biomass processing. A second approach to improve the degradability of specific cell wall components involves the expression in planta of selected CWDEs. We expect that the controlled expression of CWDEs is a promising approach to facilitate and enhance the degradability of specific cell wall components. The complexity of the cell wall and the extent of the scientific and technical problems that must be faced to allow a significant production of biofuels from plant biomass require a strict collaboration between US and EU research groups and industries. Large-scale screening of microbial collections and high-throughput chemical and structural analyses of cell walls from different plant species requires that several groups from US and EU join their efforts and their complementary expertise. A strict collaboration

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between US and EU will allow us to overcome present bottlenecks in enzymatic processing of the diverse nature of plants into useful commodities.

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EU Biomass Potential and Environmental Constraints

Berien Elbersen* and Jan-Erik Petersen** * Alterra, Wageningen, The Netherlands

** European Environment Agency Increasing the use of bioenergy offers significant opportunities for Europe to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the security of its energy supply. However, the substantial rise in the use of biomass from agriculture and other sectors for producing transport fuels and energy can put significant environmental pressures on farmland or forest biodiversity as well as on soil and water resources. Consequently, it may counteract current and potential future environmental policies and objectives, such as improving the quality of ground and surface waters or biodiversity protection. These issues are addressed in the EEA report No 7/2006 on ‘How much bioenergy can Europe produce without harming the environment?’ and the approach and results are presented in this presentation. The scenario analysis presented here pinpoints the environmental aspects that should be looked at when increasing bioenergy production on farmland. The model also gives an indication of how much agricultural biomass is potentially available without harming the environment and without counteracting current and potential future EU environmental policies and objectives. The key scenario assumptions for estimating the environmentally compatible bioenergy production potential on farmland are:

a) Assumptions for the maintenance or further development of an ‘environmentally orientated farming’ in the EU: the present share of ‘environmentally orientated’ farming would need to increase to about 30% of the Utilised Agricultural Area in most Member States by 2030; at least 3% of present intensively used farmland should be set-aside by 2030 for nature conservation purposes; no conversion of permanent grassland, agro-forestry areas (Dehesas and Montados) and olive groves through ploughing for targeted biomass crops.

b) Further technological development and research would allow a diversification of energy crops and conversion pathways for different types of biomass (2nd generation conversion pathways, biogas, efficient bioenergy combinations).

c) The selection of energy crops and their management at farm level would follow environmental guidance (adaptation to bio-physical constraints and ecological values of a region, appropriate crop mixes and rotations, low use of inputs, double cropping practices etc.).

The environmentally-compatible bioenergy potential from agriculture could reach up to 142 MtOE by 2030, compared to 47 MtOE in 2010. Approximately 85 % of the potential will come from only seven Member States (Spain, France, Germany, Italy, UK, Lithuania and Poland). This potential is contingent upon assumptions regarding the farmland area available for energy crop production in each Member State, the competition with food

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and export markets, the impact of environmental constraints and the yield of the assumed bioenergy crops. In addition, four major caveats have to be highlighted for interpreting the results of the study:

a) The model assumptions had to be restricted to environmental impacts in Europe given available resources, data and limited knowledge about effects in other regions of the world. The price rises in world food markets and recent studies indicate that the indirect effects of European bioenergy production, even if it builds on land that is assumed surplus to European food requirements, clearly outweigh the potential environmental effects within Europe itself, in particular with regard to life cycle GHG balances of bioenergy pathways (Searchinger et al., 2008; Fargione et al., 2008).

b) The study only estimates the technically available biomass potential but does not make any predictions about the potential that can realistically be exploited under economic and logistic constraints. The latter is likely to be significantly lower than the estimates given in the EEA study, in particular since some of the assumed technological pathways are at least currently considerably more expensive than mainstream biofuel pathways (at least excluding indirect environmental costs).

c) The study does not analyse the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that can be avoided through the exploitation of the environmentally-compatible potential within the EU-25. This strongly depends on the way in which biomass is converted into heat, electricity, and transport fuels and which fossil fuels are replaced. A detailed analysis of the avoided greenhouse gas emissions at EU level would be useful in completing the environmental assessment of different bioenergy production options.

d) Further analysis would also be needed for exploring the potential impacts of climate change on the cultivation and yield of energy crops as this aspect was beyond the scope of the study.

Policies are needed for supporting environmentally-friendly farming in general and the environmentally-compatible production of energy crops in particular. At the same time there are many research needs to support the quick introduction of new biomass crops with low environmental pressures, the so-called low input-high output crops.

Further research needs

o The identification of the most suitable biomass crops is a complicated issue and still needs a lot of RTD also in relation to the practical implementation in existing farming systems.

o Great yield differences between experimental fields and practical applications by farmers at either small or larger scale. It is not only high yields but also energy

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content and energy balance that need to be considered in both experimental and practical applications.

o There is also still a lot of RTD needed on plant breeding, selection of crops, varieties and crop genetics which may improve characteristics of crops suitable for biomass production under different climatic circumstances (certainly arid conditions.

o Until now only very limited work on exploring the available bioenery options has highlighted some potential ’win-win’ solutions from energy cropping. However more research efforts and practical applications are needed.

o There is still a lot of RTD requirements needed on finding measures to improve the efficiency in relation to the input-output ratio in the cropping phase and the energy efficiency in the full chain, including the part from converting biomass to energy.

o At this moment biomass subsidies are not linked to a “sustainability” standard” (climate effect, biodiversity, security of supply, rural economy, etc): More research should therefore be done on answering the questions: What is sustainable? How do you measure it? How do you certify that?

Opportunities for EC-US cooperation

There should be opportunities to collaborate on all identified research questions given above. Literature: EEA (2007), Estimating the environmentally compatible biomass potential from agriculture, Technical report no. 12/ 2007. Copenhagen. (December, 2007). Fargione, J.; Hill, J.; Tilman, D.; Polasky, S. & Hawthorne, P. (2008), Land clearing and biofuel carbon debt. Scienceexpress, 7 February 2008. Searchinger, T.; Heimlich, R.; Houghton, R.; Dong, F.; Elobeid, A.; Fabiosa, J.; Tokgoz, S.; Hayes, D. & Yu, T. (2008), Use of US cropland for biofuels increases greenhouse gases through emissions from land use change. Scienceexpress. 7 February 2008.

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Development of baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae for the fermentation of lignocellulose derived raw materials

Bärbel Hahn-Hägerdal Applied Microbiology

Lund University Lignocellulose constitutes a world-wide available renewable raw material, which is and will be used to replace fossil feed-stocks for the production of liquid and solid fuels, electricity, chemicals and materials. Lignocellulose is composed of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. While cellulose is composed of glucose monomers only, hemicellulose is made up of the hexose sugars glucose, mannose, and galactose, and the pentose sugars xylose and arabinose. The relative proportion of the different sugars depends on the origin of the raw material, with softwood hemicellulose mainly made up of hexose sugars and hardwoods and agricultural raw materials containing a relatively larger fraction of the pentose sugars xylose and arabinose. The bioconversion of lignocellulosic raw materials with enzymatic and fermentation processes requires thermocehemical pretreatment and fraction. These processes generate compounds which are inhibitory to enzymes and fermenting micro-organisms. The presentation will highlight how baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been selected, adapted and genetically engineered to convert all lignocellulose derived sugars to ethanol in the presence of inhibitory compounds generated in the pretreatment and fractionation processes. In this context collaboration between US and EU is desirable in:

• Fundamental research, for example, through a joint post-doctoral program;

• Benchmarking of novel enzymes/enzyme cocktails and novel strains in relation to raw materials and pretreatments;

• Demonstration of biomass to bio-energy technology integrated into traditional

forest and agricultural industry.

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Genetic Approaches to Identify Genes that Regulate Cell Wall Synthesis

1Sarah Hake, 1George Chuck, 1Nathalie Bolduc, 2Markus Pauly, 3John Vogel

1 Plant Gene Expression Center, 800 Buchanan St. Albany CA 2 Plant Research Lab, Michigan State

3 Western Region Research Center, 800 Buchanan St. Albany CA We are using different genetic approaches to identify regulatory networks that direct cell wall synthesis and plant architecture in maize and Brachypodium. In one approach, we are screening mutagenized populations for cell walls with altered saccharification. In a pilot study of 100 maize families, we found one that segregates individuals with increased sugars/mg of cell wall. Crosses will be made to map the mutation and determine the responsible gene. Leaves and stem will be analyzed for cellular structure and cell wall components. In another approach we are starting with the Corngrass mutation of maize that produces only juvenile leaves and never transitions to an adult habit. The leaves have reduced lignin and increased sugars. We cloned Corngrass and determined that the dominant mutation is due to overexpression of microRNA miR156. miR156 in turn down-regulates a family of SPL transcription factors. We are in the process of analyzing mutations in these SPL genes. We are also transforming miR156 into Brachypodium and switchgrass. A final approach starts with the KN1 transcription factor that promotes indeterminate cell fate. Overexpression of KN1 and related homologs affects cell walls and lignin deposition. We are using microarrays and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) to identify the direct targets of KN1, one of which is phenyl ammonium lyase (PAL), which is a key enzyme in the lignin pathway. Other cell wall genes that are targets of KN1 will be identified by high-throughput sequencing of the ChIP DNA.

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Design and Construction of a Photoautotrophic Bacterium for Hydrogen

Production

Alfonso Jaramillo Ecole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau, France

The power generation industry has a major impact on the quality of life, both through its substantial contribution to wealth creation and through the potential that sustainable power generation systems offer for reducing environmental impact. The EU is extremely dependent on its external energy supplies with imports currently accounting for 50% of requirements. This figure is projected to reach 70% if current trends persist. At present, greenhouse gas emissions in the EU are on the rise making it difficult to respond to the challenge of climate change and to meet the commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. The EU has relatively limited scope to influence energy supply conditions. Efforts will have to focus on orienting the demand for energy in a way that respects the EU Kyoto commitments and is mindful of security of supply. Hydrogen is considered as the energy carrier of the future. We will present our project BioModularH2, which aims at an efficient, environmentally friendly source of hydrogen that may increase the energetic independence of EU countries. Our project BioModularH2 aims at designing reusable, standardized molecular building blocks that will produce an artificial photosynthetic bacterium containing engineered chemical pathways for competitive, clean and sustainable hydrogen production. We will discuss the design of a hydrogen producing cyanobacterium and of a set of standardized modules that would also be useful for other future bioproduction or biodegradation applications. We use a Synechocystis strain as a chassis, for which we are developing suitable genetic engineering tools. Our approach for biohydrogen production consists on creating an anaerobic environment within the cell for an optimized hydrogenase by using an oxygen-consuming device, which is connected to an oxygen-sensing device and regulated by artificial circuits. To model the bioproduction pathways and photosynthetic electron transport chain, we are using high throughput genomic and proteomic data. This modeling requires the corresponding development of bioinformatics tools to predict, design and simulate biochemical pathway interactions and the responses of the biological systems to changes. The specifications from the systems design continuously demand the construction of novel biological molecular parts, where we engineer proteins with new enzymatic activities and new molecular recognition patterns by combining computational and in vitro evolution methodologies. We expect our photoautotrophic chassis, biological devices and tools will be useful for future projects.

The meeting to be held in San Francisco, offers a great opportunity for communication and information exchange with our colleagues in the US. We foresee great opportunities of cooperation with US groups approaching bioenergy production from synthetic biology, metagenomics or microbial engineering approaches. Our consortium would also benefit from US work in electron transfer pathways, such as respiration and photosynthesis, that will surely provide useful insights in the optimal way to model and redesign them in cyanobacteria. We should also not forget that metagenomic studies may lead to the discover of new pathways to be introduced in our system. The bioproduction problem requires the development of novel computational tools to model system-wide

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properties of gene regulatory networks or to design novel biosynthetic pathways. EU projects such as ours will take advantage from the important advances in synthetic biology by US groups. We could cooperate to find a common approach to bioenergy production that integrates data arising from transcript, protein, and metabolite profiling to obtain an accurate and complete description of the organism to be used as chassis. The cooperation is not necessarily restricted to cyanobacteria, as we are involved in generating general approaches and tools that could be used in other systems. The quest of a synthetic chromosome that could be integrated in a synthetic cell, to be used in energy production, will also produce and require new tools and technologies that could be used or developed by EU partners. Maybe those EU-US efforts could end up in the design and construction of a synthetic phototrophic cell that could be used in many bioenergy applications.

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Breeding and Biotechnology Perspectives in Miscanthus

Uffe Jørgensen Aarhus Universitet, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences (DJF), Department of Agroecology

and Environment, Research Centre Foulum, Denmark

The perennial C4-grass miscanthus, which originates from Eastern Asia, became of major interest as a potential biomass crop in Europe during the 1990s due to its high productivity even in cool Northern European conditions (Beale & Long, 1995; Jones & Walsh, 2001). Species from the genus Miscanthus are amongst the most cold-tolerant C4-species due to the protection of photosystem II by a many-fold increase of the leaf zeaxanthin content at temperatures below 14 °C (Farage et al, 2006). Like other perennial grasses miscanthus has a low environmental impact. Nitrate leaching is, for example, as low as from willow and almost comparable to forests and natural areas even when optimally fertilised (Jørgensen, 2005). Although very large initial miscanthus projects were conducted they were almost restricted to one genotype, namely the sterile, triploid, interspecific hybrid M. x giganteus, and ran into significant problems with low first winter survival and prohibitively high costs of vegetative establishment (Jørgensen & Schwarz, 2000).

Several EU-projects on screening of the genetic base (Clifton-Brown et al., 2001; Jørgensen et al., 2003a; Lewandowski et al., 2003) and on developing breeding methods including molecular markers, chromosome doubling (Atienza et al., 2003a-d; Petersen et al., 2002; 2003) and gentic transformation (not published) were, therefore, conducted. Miscanthus genotypes have shown a wide variation in Radiation Use Efficiencies (Jørgensen et al., 2003b), which indicates a breeding potential for this crop similar to that achieved in willow. Additionally, the content of minerals such as chloride and potassium in miscanthus straw, which is important for determining combustion quality, may vary 10-fold between genotypes (Jørgensen, 1997).

Problems during the 1990s with establishing Miscanthus have more or less been overcome due to an understanding of the causes (climate x genetics) and to the development of new planting methods that have also cut establishment costs by approx. 80% (Clifton-Brown & Lewandowski, 2000; Jørgensen & Schwarz, 2000). The Danish company Nordic Biomass (www.nordicbiomass.dk) now carries out commercial establishments of miscanthus. However, improving methods of establishment and reducing costs are still important development goals, and e.g. establishment from seed may be an option worth pursuing.

The latest EU framework programmes have not included research on miscanthus, whereas research in the US has increased due to i.e. reports on yields way beyond those of switchgrass (Heaton et al., 2004). Much attention has been given to the utilisation of miscanthus for ethanol, which may be possible but will be hampered by the significant 20-30% lignin content when harvesting mature straw (Visser & Pignatelli, 2001). To improve biological degradation of miscanthus fibres before ethanol conversion several biotechnological approaches have been proposed. One method now exploited in wheat,

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which may be replicated in miscanthus, is to introduce a xylanase gene from heat-tolerant bacteria into the genetic material of the plant. Xylanase breaks down the linkages between arabinoxylan and lignin in the plant fibres, but is due to its origin from heat tolerant bacteria not active until temperatures of approx. 80 oC imposed during the production of bioethanol (Mathrani et al., 1992).

The research on miscanthus in Europe has amassed a large gene pool including several species, hundreds of genotypes within species, and well characterised populations of offspring from crosses. The first commercial new breeds are now available (www.tinplant-gmbh.de). In summary European research has resulted in a well-characterised gene pool, basic knowledge achieved on QTLs to assist in Marker Aided Selection programmes, a preliminary transformation protocol, and candidate genes. The next step of developing improved miscanthus crops adapted to a range of pedoclimatic conditions, and with improved yields, convertibility, etc. should be ready to take. With the current high US interest in miscanthus and the significant funding allocated to this area, there are obvious benefits to be achieved by establishing collaborative research between EU and the US.

Atienza, S.G., Satovic, Z., Petersen, K.K., Dolstra, O. & Martín, A., 2003a. Identification

of QTLs associated with yield and its components in Miscanthus sinensis Anderss. Euphytica 132, 353-361.

Atienza, S.G., Satovic, Z., Petersen, K.K., Dolstra, O. & Martín, A., 2003b. Identification of QTLs influencing agronomic traits in Miscanthus sinensis Anderss. II. Chlorine and potassium content. - Theor. Appl. Genet. 107, 857-863.

Atienza, S.G., Satovic, Z., Petersen, K.K., Dolstra, O. & Martín, A., 2003c. Identification of QTLs influencing agronomic traits in Miscanthus sinensis Anderss. I. Total height, flag-leaf height and stem diameter. - Theor. Appl. Genet. 107, 123-129.

Atienza, S.G., Satovic, Z., Petersen, K.K., Dolstra, O. & Martín, A., 2003d. Influencing combustion quality in Miscanthus sinensis Anderss.: Identification of QTLs for calcium, phosphorus and sulphur content. Plant Breeding 122, 141-145.

Beale CV & Long SP. 1997. Seasonal dynamics of nutrient accumulation and partitioning in the perennial C4-grasses Miscanthus x giganteus and Spartina cynosuroides. Biomass and Bioenergy 12: 419-428.

Clifton-Brown, J.C., Lewandowski, I., 2000. Overwintering problems of newly established Miscanthus plantations can be overcome by identifying genotypes with improved rhizome cold tolerance. New Phytologist 148, 287-294.

Clifton-Brown, J.C., Lewandowski, I., Andersson, B., Basch, G., Christian, D.G., Kjeldsen, J.B., Jorgensen, U., Mortensen, J.V., Riche, A.B., Schwarz, K.-U., Tayebi, K. & Teixeira, F., 2001. Performance of 15 Miscanthus Genotypes at Five Sites in Europe. Agronomy Journal 93, 1013-1019.

Farage, P.K., Blowers, D., Long, S.P. & Baker, N.R. Low growth temperatures modify the efficiency of light use by photosystem II for CO2 assimilation in leaves of two chilling-tolerant C4 species, Cyperus longus L. and Miscanthus x giganteus. Plant, Cell and environment 29, 720-728.

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Heaton E., Voigt T. & Long S.P., 2004. A quantitative review comparing the yields of two candidate C-4 perennial biomass crops in relation to nitrogen, temperature and water. Biomass & Bioenergy, 27, 21-30.

Jones, M.B. & Walsh, M. (eds.), 2001. Miscanthus for energy and fibre. James & James, London, 192 pp.

Jørgensen, U., 1997. Genotypic variation in dry matter accumulation and content of N, K, and Cl in Miscanthus in Denmark. Biomass and Bioenergy 12,(3),155-169 pp.

Jørgensen U., 2005. How to reduce nitrate leaching by production of perennial energy crops? In: Zhu Z, Minami K and Xing G (eds.): 3rd International Nitrogen Conference. Contributed Papers. Science Press, NJ, USA. p. 513-518.

Jørgensen, U., Mortensen, J., Kjeldsen, J.B. & Schwarz, K.U., 2003a. Establishment, development and yield quality of fifteen miscanthus genotypes over three years in Denmark. Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section B - Plant Soil Science 53, 190-199.

Jørgensen, U., Mortensen, J. & Ohlsson, C., 2003b. Light interception and dry matter conversion efficiency of miscanthus genotypes estimated from spectral reflectance measurements. New Phytologist 157, 263-270.

Jørgensen, U. & Schwarz, K.-U., 2000. Why do basic research? A lesson from commercial exploitation of Miscanthus. New Phytologist 148, 190-193.

Lewandowski, I., Clifton-Brown, J.C., Andersson, B., Basch, G., Christian, D.G., Jørgensen, U., Jones, M.B., Riche, A.B., Schwarz, K.U., Tayebi, K. & Teixeira, F., 2003. Environment and harvest time affects the combustion qualities of Miscanthus genotypes. Agronomy Journal 95, 1274-1280. Mathrani, I. M. and B. K. Ahring, 1992. Thermophilic and Alkalophilic Xylanases from Several Dictyoglomus-Isolates. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 38 (1): 23-27.

Petersen, K.K., Hagberg, P. & Kristiansen, K., 2002. In vitro chromosome doubling of Miscanthus sinensis. Plant Breeding. 121:445-450..

Petersen, K.K., Hagberg, P. & Kristiansen, K., 2003. Colchicine and oryzalin mediated chromosome doubling in different genotypes of Miscanthus sinensis. Plant Cell, Tiss. Org. Cult. 73, 137-146.

Visser, P. & Pignatelli, V., 2001. Utilisation of Miscanthus. In: Jones, M.B. & Walsh, M. (eds.), 2001. Miscanthus for energy and fibre. James & James, London, 192 pp.

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Addressing the Need for Alternative Transportation Fuels: The Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI)

Jay Keasling, CEO

Joint BioEnergy Institute Emeryville, CA

Today, carbon-rich fossil fuels, primarily oil, coal and natural gas, provide 85% of the energy consumed in the United States. As world demand increases, oil reserves may become rapidly depleted1. Fossil fuel use increases CO2 emissions and raises the risk of global warming. The high energy content of liquid hydrocarbon fuels makes them the preferred energy source for all modes of transportation. In the US alone, transportation consumes around 13.8 million barrels of oil per day and generates over 0.5 gigatons of carbon per year2. This release of greenhouse gases has spurred research into alternative, non-fossil energy sources. Among the options (nuclear, concentrated solar thermal, geothermal, hydroelectric, wind, solar and biomass), only biomass has the potential to provide a high-energy-content transportation fuel. Biomass is a renewable resource that can be converted into carbon-neutral transportation fuels. Currently, biofuels such as ethanol are produced largely from grains, but there is a large, untapped resource (estimated at more than a billion tons per year) of plant biomass that could be utilized as a renewable, domestic source of liquid fuels. Well established processes convert the starch content of the grain into sugars that can be fermented to ethanol. The energy efficiency of starch-based biofuels is however not optimal, while plant cell walls (lignocellulose) represents a huge untapped source of energy. Plant-derived biomass contains cellulose, which is more difficult to convert to sugars, hemicellulose, which contains a diversity of carbohydrates that have to be efficiently degraded by microorganisms to fuels, and lignin, which is recalcitrant to degradation and prevents cost-effective fermentation. The development of cost-effective and energy-efficient processes to transform lignocellulosic biomass into fuels is hampered by significant roadblocks, including the lack of specifically developed energy crops, the difficulty in separating biomass components, low activity of enzymes used to deconstruct biomass, and the inhibitory effect of fuels and processing byproducts on organisms responsible for producing fuels from biomass monomers. The Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) is a US Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Center that will address these roadblocks in biofuels production. JBEI draws on the expertise and capabilities of three national laboratories (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)), two leading US universities (University of California campuses at Berkeley (UCB) and Davis (UCD)), and a foundation (Carnegie Institute for Science, Stanford) to develop the scientific and technological base needed to convert the energy stored in lignocellulose into transportation fuels and commodity chemicals. Established scientists from the participating organizations are leading teams of researchers to solve the key scientific problems and develop the tools and infrastructure that will enable other researchers and companies to rapidly develop new biofuels and scale production to meet US transportation needs, and to develop and rapidly transition new technologies to the commercial sector.

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The Economics and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Benefits of Ethanol from Alternative Feedstocks

Madhu Khanna

University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign Biofuels are increasingly being viewed as being the center piece in any strategy for energy independence, stable energy prices, and climate change mitigation. A key constraint to our ability to expand biofuel production is likely to be the limited amount of agricultural land available to meet the needs for fuel, feed and food in the coming decades. The increasing use of corn for ethanol production in the US has been accompanied by rising prices of food and feed leading to concerns about increasing production of corn-based ethanol. At the same time recognition of the limited potential of corn-based ethanol to reduce greenhouse gases relative to gasoline has led to growing interest in using perennial grasses for producing cellulosic ethanol. This presentation examines the costs of producing cellulosic ethanol from alternative feedstocks, such as corn stover, switchgrass and miscanthus in Illinois and their competitiveness to gasoline at various gasoline prices. A crop-productivity model is used together with spatial climate data to estimate yields of miscanthus across counties in Illinois. Spatially variable yields, together with county-specific opportunity costs of land, are used to determine the spatial variability in the break-even farm-gate price of miscanthus and of cellulosic ethanol using miscanthus. We also examine the potential of various biofuel feedstocks to reduce CO2 emissions relative to gasoline. The carbon mitigation potential of biofuels from alternative feedstocks differ due to differences in the amount of carbon they sequester in the soil, in the amount of carbon emissions generated during the process of producing the feedstocks and in the amount of energy needed to convert the feedstock into fuel. We use life-cycle analysis to estimate this potential and analyze the implications of valuing this mitigation at alternative prices of CO2 emissions for the net costs of producing various biofuels and for their competitiveness relative to each other and to gasoline. We discuss the bioenergy policy needed to support the production of cellulosic ethanol. Finally, we examine the unintended effects of existing ethanol policy with a volumetric subsidy for ethanol for consumers and producer welfare and for CO2 emissions.

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The role of policy instruments in managing the social risks and enhancing the opportunities of applying biotechnology to bioenergy

Nadine McCormick

Programme Officer: Energy, Ecosystems and Livelihoods Initiative International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Introduction Many governments are promoting bioenergy – biofuels in particular – as a way to reduce the carbon footprint of the transport sector and as a way to decrease dependency on high oil prices and address energy security issues. Yet the focus on the negative impacts of biofuels obscures the huge potential of the bioenergy sector to reduce hunger and poverty by bringing about an agricultural renaissance and to supply modern energy to the 2 billion people who still depend on traditional biomass. However, if not done correctly, we risk greater environmental damage and exacerbating poverty. Does biotechnology have a role in steering the right course? Can biotechnology address the social limitations of first and second generation biofuels and enhance the development opportunities? Based on past debates over biotechnology, what lessons can be learned about the perceived and actual social risks of applying biotechnology to bioenergy? How can policy instruments be applied to minimize and manage the social risks and enhance the development opportunities? State of the art of the field To be truly sustainable, bioenergy production must be equitable in terms of delivering maximum social benefit to the range of actors along the supply chain. Biotechnology can be applied generally to be both biomass feedstock and the bioenergy conversion process. Most of the social risks – as well as opportunities – are associated with feedstock and the farmers and rural labourers who produce it. However, the more advanced the technology on either level, the increased likelihood that intellectual property rights tools are applied to recoup the high investment costs, therefore potentially making the advanced bioenergies less accessible to those who could benefit most from them. For example, patents and licenses are already being referred to by organisations engaged in advanced technologies for bioenergy. A number of international bioenergy schemes are already considering biotechnology applications within a sustainable biofuels production, including the International Risk Governance Council working group on bioenergy and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels. Research needs

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Social opportunities of biofuels are primarily linked to raising a farmer’s income per hectare. Thereby biotechnology applications should focus on traits that benefit all farmers. Technologies that reduce chemical inputs and reduce water consumption will ultimately lower costs, improving a farmer’s profits as well as their health and that of the surrounding environment. Where an advanced feedstock, due to its trait, is more likely to become invasive (at a potentially high cost to the farmer and local authorities), its introduction needs also to be accompanied by appropriate management approaches to decrease. Given the need to manage competing demands between food and fuel as well as environmental sustainability, it is important to move quickly to second generation feedstock and conversion processes. This will also reduce the potential health risks of humans or animals inadvertently consuming an enhanced energy crop. This requires a large shift in current research away from food crops, such as corn and soy.

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Bioenergy and global land use in an ecological perspective

Jan-Erik Petersen European Environment Agency

With the strong increase of human populations worldwide and of living standards, in particular in the industrialised countries, global energy consumption is beginning to exhaust known fossil energy reserves. In addition, the release of CO2 from the burning of fossil energy sources (as well as other industrial processes and primary production) induces global climate change which has very serious implications for the global environment as well as living and production conditions for human society. In this context, the use of biomass for energy is considered a potential solution as it offers moderate to strong greenhouse gas savings compared to the use of fossil energy and is by definition a renewable resource. The increasing versatility of using biomass for food, feed, energy and manufacturing purposes to satisfy the essential and material needs of human populations around the world brings with it a potential for competition between various end use streams. An example of that can be seen in the recent increase of world cereal prices which in part was induced by additional demand for agricultural output for biofuel production. In addition, one needs to consider that the world’s forest, grassland and agricultural ecosystems not only help to fulfil human society’s immediate needs for food and warmth but also harbour a wealth of biodiversity of intrinsic and utilitarian value and support global to local nutrient, water and atmospheric cycles. Given decades and centuries of intensive use and loss of natural ecosystems there is a clear need to limit economic pressures on the remaining natural areas, in particular on tropical rainforest. The importance of forests and grasslands as pools of biodiversity and carbon sinks places strong limits on their conversion to cultivated land. Furthermore, the growth of all agricultural crops depends on suitable environmental conditions, e.g. the availability of fertile soils, water in sufficient quantity and regularity, as well organic and inorganic material in the right mix. Urbanisation, desertification, salinisation and other factors are already encroaching on the world’s cultivatable land area. Given likely future impacts from climate change this requires a careful reflection which human needs the available land area should be primarily used for without endangering its future productivity and ecological functions. The development of biotechnology for a more efficient production of bioenergy can be a helpful tool for exploiting natural and ecological resources in a sustainable manner. Many factors, including technological advances, the direction and scale of public subsidies, the influence of environmental concerns as well as decisions by economic actors will determine the future development of bioenergy. How they will precisely interact cannot be predicted but it may be helpful to provide a graphical presentation of key influences. Figure 1 shows different domains that are likely to influence the possible development of bioenergy production:

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This complex set of interactions leads to substantial challenges in developing suitable analytical and modelling approaches for assessing the impacts of bioenergy production from an energy, environmental or market perspective. Nevertheless, it is necessary to establish a sound conceptual and methodological framework for analysing the potential for energy production from biomass and its implications for environmental protection and other policy areas. This should take a global perspective as the increasing international trade in agricultural and energy products makes this necessary. Given the increasing interconnections between different biomass uses, policy areas as well global food and environmental challenges the sustainable development of bioenergy production requires a stronger emphasis on inter-disciplinary research than until now. In this regard the focus should not only be on biotechnology but also on global to local governance issues, structural and social factors of farming systems around the world as well as the key agro-ecological principles that determine the environmental sustainability of biomass production for food, energy and material purposes. Studies for the European Environment Agency have shown that in the European context some recommendations can be developed that help to adapt energy cropping systems to agri-environmental background conditions. These include the following steps:

• Try to introduce a mix of biomass crops in order to maintain and/or increase landscape diversity and prevent a further tightening of the crop rotation.

• Try to introduce innovative low input-high yielding farming practices such as mulch systems, double cropping, mixed cropping, strip cropping.

• Aim for a reduction in mechanization intensity, such as less tillage and ploughing. • Identify drought resistant, high yielding crops for arid zones that suit existing

farming systems. • Explore win-win solutions for biomass cropping in which biomass is produced

while e.g. farmland biodiversity is enhanced, land use is extensified,

Available land

resource

Technol. options + efficiency

Food/feed + material demand

Energy policy

Weight of bioenergy

Choice of pathways

Economic actors

Farmers Industry

Environment policy

GHG balance

Soils + water

Biodi-versity

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environmental problems prevented (e.g. soil erosion and fire risk). This can involve currently non-productive lands if the biomass use supports habitat management and avoids negative impacts.

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Improvement of resource use efficiency of biomass crops

Uli Schurr, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany Resource use efficiency is of crucial importance for the development of sustainable production of biomass for bioenergy. In evolutionary times different plant species have developed specific adaptations to acquire the often variable resources on the molecular, physiological and geometrical level above – and belowground. Breeding plants with improved efficiency of the use of water, nutrients and light needs to take into account the tight interaction between plant processes and structures with the spatio-temporal availability of the resources of the environment. Resource use efficiency is a complex trait that consist out of adaptive mechanisms and structures on various levels from the molecular level to the plant and agricultural level. Different mechanisms have been developed by plant species to forage efficiency from specially and temporally variable resources. On the other hand, these mechanisms do also need to optimize for the cost of implementation of structures and functions. The geometry and architecture of shoots and rots develop from localized growth process responding to the environment. However the sensitivity of growth process to resource use availability is very different for roots and leaves and is strongly linked to the dynamics of environmental cues: aboveground growth processes are strongly buffered from short-term changes in the environment and controlled by endogenous programs that cause quite stable and in many cases symmetrical structures. In contrast, root growth responds within second on effective environmental cues like temperature or changes in resource availability giving rise to high flexible root system geometries.

Recent non-invasive technologies become available that quantify dynamics of key plant processes like leaf growth, photosynthesis and water transport and even the development of root structures and suntions in soil: leaf and root growth screening as well as the determination of quantitative properties of root systems have been developed on the basis of optical methods combined with novel image processing algorithms. High resolution spectral imaging allows analyzing for photosynthetic characteristics as well as composition and structural features. Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging methods and positron emission tomography – traditionally used in medical studies – have been adapted and further developed to allow spatial and temporal non-invasive analysis of plant performance under variable atmospheric and soil conditions. Such technologies do presently increase the understanding how plants optimize resource use under naturally fluctuating conditions – through high throughput as well as novel detailed quantitative analysis. On the bases of this improved understanding more adequate screens and trait identification process can be developed for breeding more efficient crops.

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A U.S. Perspective on the Economic Sustainability of Biofuels

John Sheehan Vice President for Strategy and Sustainable Development

Livefuels, Inc., Menlo Park, USA

My current job—and for that matter, much of my career—has focused on understanding the challenges we face in making biofuels a sustainable part of our transportation energy supply. Too often, advocates and opponents of biofuels focus on only one aspect of sustainability with respect to biofuels—either economic or environmental. In truth, the sustainability of biofuels encompasses both of these and more. While my talk emphasizes the economic aspects of biofuels, I hope to show that social and environmental aspects of biofuels have strong impacts on the economic viability of biofuels. Never has this been more apparent than in today’s volatile energy and agricultural markets. The economics of “second generation” ethanol The cornerstone of the U.S. Department of Energy’s biofuels effort is the development of a biological process for converting lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol. DOE tracks its progress on the technology using detailed process design and economic models maintained by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The last detailed update of that model was published by NREL in 2002. The key lessons are pretty simple:

• Biomass feedstocks are a large part of the cost • Capital intensity of the technology is a major barrier to deployment • Huge improvements are needed in enzymes to degrade cellulose and in

microbes to ferment the sugars The economic issues in the rest of the supply chain NREL’s economic analysis views the technology of conversion in isolation. This is understandable in the early days of technology development. Easily 90% of DOE’s efforts are focused on R&D and commercialization of the conversion facility. But, in the end, the economics of the technology exist in the context of a total supply chain. Weaknesses in any one of the elements can make or break the success of the technology. Let me take these elements of the supply chain one at a time. Feedstock production. A twist on the rallying cry of an earlier U.S. presidential campaign might put it this way—”It’s the feedstock, stupid!”. Or, more to the point, perhaps we should say “It’s the land, stupid!”. More important than the supply and demand aspects of the fuel market are the supply and demand aspects of available land for biomass production. We have watched painful examples of these dynamics in the past two years. Increased grain prices have created unprecedented social and economic pressures on corn ethanol and biodiesel producers—creating a situation in which today’s biofuels producers face economics that are completely upside down. Although some of these price pressures may simply be due to speculation in the commodities market, they also represent the basic competition for land as a source of food, feed, fiber—and now fuel. One alternative that I am pursuing in my new position at LiveFuels is algae—a source of biomass that

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could conceivably bypass the land resource constraints facing agriculture’s choice between food and fuel production. Feedstock distribution. There is no economic way to move the new generation biomass feedstocks to the production facility. This lack of affordable infrastructure exacerbates the feedstock cost problems that new biomass facilities will face. Biomass conversion to fuel. This, of course, is the part of the supply chain that has received a lot of attention. Even so, there are still big hurdles facing the commercialization of biofuels production. The combination of high capital cost and high risk are a formula for failure. High risk increases the cost of an already high capital cost. Indeed, the “dirty little secret” for ethanol from biomass is its relatively low energy efficiency. The relatively low (less than 50%) capture of biomass energy in the form of useful energy products translates to inefficient use of land—the resource, as I have indicated, that most impacts the future sustainability of a large biofuels industry. Fuel distribution. Herein lies another inadequately addressed issue. With the U.S. Department of Energy’s almost compulsive focus on ethanol, we face major questions of fuel compatibility in today’s fuel distribution system. Put bluntly, as a recent California regulator put it, “if it contains oxygen, it’s not going in the fuel distribution system.” Beyond this issue is the fact that biomass production location is out of sync with the movements of the current pipeline system. All of this adds up to new infrastructure development and new costs. Fuel markets. An open question in my mind is whether the current forms of biofuels can meet the most critical needs of the transportation sector. Reduced energy density and infrastructure compatibility issues are competitive handicaps for these fuels. Ethanol, for example, is of no use to two of our strategically most important markets—freight and aviation. Furthermore, it requires ethanol-capable vehicle adoption. The recent introduction of renewable diesel by the petroleum refiners as an alternative to the methyl ester form of biodiesel represents an opportunity to more effectively meet the needs of the diesel and aviation transportation markets, while eliminating pipeline and vehicle compatibility issues. The introduction of such a promising latecomer in the biofuels arena might suggest that we have been moving too fast and too narrowly toward specific fuel solutions. Finally, U.S. policymakers have thus far failed to implement policies that support sustainable development of biofuels. If anything they have created chaos in the marketplace, and emphasized “special interest” solutions. Closing thoughts These are precarious times for biofuels. The industry suffers from knife-edge economics that can easily be turned upside down by the supply and demand dynamics of the land/food markets. And, if we are not careful, the biofuels industry will find itself struggling with a negative public perception from which it may not survive. Investments in new, more sustainable technology look promising, but still face high risks for pioneer plant investment. Unless all elements of the supply chain are kept in balance, we will find

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ourselves in a familiar pickle—fuels without a home or vehicles without a fuel. It is paramount that we put our heads together to address the benefits, tradeoffs, risks and challenges of creating an economically sustainable biofuels industry. Finally, we must look beyond the biofuels supply chain for answers. We need demand management as well as new supply solutions. It comes down to finding sustainable, global solutions for transportation.

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Cell Wall Research in the Context of Cellulosic Biofuels

Chris Somerville, Energy Biosciences Institute University of California, Berkeley CA

The efficient production of biofuels will require innovation in three main areas: production of feedstocks, conversion of feedstocks to sugars, and conversion of sugars or oligosaccharides to fuels. At present, the main feedstocks being used for fuel production are corn starch and sugar from sugarcane. However, the demand for fuel vastly exceeds the amount that can be produced from these feedstocks so it is expected that most fuel will ultimately be derived from cellulosic biomass. There has not been a major effort to improve plants for enhanced biomass production. Indeed, in many cases, plant breeders have focused on reducing total biomass in favor of increasing the yield of edible components. To increase solar conversion efficiency of plants by rational methods, we need to understand the control of growth rate and plant architecture, the mechanistic basis for drought tolerance and related stresses, and the design principles of plant cell walls - the main component of biomass. I think it likely that if we understood how the composition of cell walls is regulated, and how primary carbon flux is regulated, we would be able to engineer plants for strongly increased biomass accumulation. Additionally, we would be able to engineer cell walls for enhanced efficiency of conversion to fuels and other materials. The identity of many of the several thousand genes that are estimated to control cell wall properties can be hypothesized based on the full genome sequences available for Arabidopsis and several other plants. However, in order to use this information to understand cell walls we need improved methods for functional analysis of these and other genes. We also need improved analytical methods and reagents to facilitate functional assays of genetic variation. These range from resource issues such as affordable sources of radioactive nucleotide sugars to biological adaptations of biophysical methods. I will describe some recent progress in our efforts to understand cell wall synthesis and function. Methods for converting cellulosic biomass to sugars typically involve harsh treatments such as explosive decompression of ammonia or hot acid treatment. These pretreatments impose high infrastructure costs and also create toxic byproducts that poison the organisms used to ferment sugars to fuels. I believe that by understanding how cell walls are synthesized it may be possible to redesign the preprocessing treatments so that they are less costly and result in increased efficiency of fuel production. In particular, it may be possible to design plants with altered kinds of lignin that are more readily removed from cell walls. That, in turn, may allow the use of lignin as a raw materials for development of industrial products rather than as a low value combustion fuel. It may also be possible to modify the physical properties of cellulose fibrils to facilitate enzymatic hydrolysis.

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From natural to artificial photosynthesis - biomimetic chemistry for the production of hydrogen from solar energy and water

Stenbjörn Styring

Department for Photochemistry and Molecular Science, Molecular Biomimetics. The Ångström Laboratory, Uppsala University

The lecture will outline the research agenda in the Swedish Consortium for Artificial Photosynthesis and the European SOLAR-H networks. Solar energy and water – is it possible to make hydrogen from these endless resources? Hydrogen is a valuable fuel and a future energy carrier that can take us beyond the fossil fuel and global warming era – but the hydrogen must be produced from renewable resources in an environmentally friendly manner! There are not many ideas of how this shall be accomplished! In the Swedish consortium for artificial photosynthesis and the European network SOLAR-H we try to make this vision come true! Our science integrates two unique tracks that will allow efficient production of hydrogen from never-ending resources. The photosynthetic organisms use solar energy to produce food, biomass etc. What is not known to everybody is that their key raw-material is water and this allows photosynthetic organisms to thrive almost everywhere. A special enzyme, Photosystem II, uses solar energy to cleave water to protons, oxygen and most importantly electrons. These electrons are valuable and find many uses in the organism. Sometimes these electrons find the way to enzymes that use them to make hydrogen. Thus, there exist green algae and cyanobacteria that make hydrogen from solar energy and water. Not huge amounts – but the process exists! We try to identify the best of these organisms. The idea, and a multi-faceted scientific challenge, is to make them more efficient for our purpose. In essence they shall grow less, make less biomass but produce more hydrogen in a bio-reactor where the hydrogen can be collected. The science on photobiological hydrogen production demands long-term research by an integrated team of molecular biologists, biochemists and bio-technological researchers. However, in our science we do not restrict ourselves to use and improve existing organisms. We also want to achieve artificial photosynthesis to produce hydrogen directly from solar energy and water, in a totally manmade system. The scientific short-cut is to study and learn from the natural processes. The bearing idea is to develop chemistry where the absolute key reactions from nature are mimicked but not directly copied. Instead of chlorophyll, the scientists use the metal ruthenium to catch the solar energy. The amazing photosynthetic enzyme that cleaves water with solar energy uses the metal manganese. Similarly, the scientists will use manganese complexes. Nature uses an iron enzyme to make hydrogen - similarly the scientists will make complexes with iron. The idea is to connect these catalytic metal centers (water-oxidation by a manganese system; hydrogen formation by an iron system and light absorption by a ruthenium

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center) with interfacing electron transferring bridges. Artificial photosynthesis of this kind has not yet been managed and, although progress is fast, tomorrow might lie far ahead! How efficient might artificial photosynthesis become? Our estimations, based on physical limitations, suggest that an apparatus for artificial photosynthesis on the roof of the garage or family house might become sufficient to drive the car with hydrogen instead of petrol or to cover the energy demand of the people living there. The scientific fields of artificial photosynthesis and photobiological hydrogen production suffer both from lack of integration and collaborative efforts between the US and the EU. There are many research collaborations between groups but no major efforts. However, integration and concerted research collaboration would be very useful since research on renewable fuel production is urgent to burning. One potential option is to start such collaborative efforts by starting a joint meeting arena in the shape of a conference line in the field of "Hydrogen production from solar energy and water" or something named like that. This conference line should not involve also scientists carrying out different aspects of fermentation, for example ethanol production, since the research communities have little in common and only limited interest in each others problems. There is a newly started Gordon conference line on "SOLAR Fuels". The first was held in 2007, the second will be held in 2009 and a European Gordon will be held in 2010. A collaborative EU-US conference line ALSO incorportating the photobioloigical research (which is weak to absent in the Gordon line) should probably run in the year when there is no Gordon and alternate between Europe and the East coast of the US to facilitate European travelling. The size of the conference should probable be towards ca 250 persons.

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Plant Domestication, Biofuels Development and Poplar Genomics

Gerald Tuskan Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Oak Ridge, Tennessee USA ABSTRACT – Plant domestication is the alteration of a plant, whose morphology and physiology are directed towards survival and reproduction in the wild, into a cultivated species whose morphology and physiology have been tailored by artificial selection as a means of increasing the yield of useful products. Domestication through traditional means of plant breeding and agronomic modifications has resulted in advances in overall yield, pest resistance and adaptation. Most recommended biomass energy crops however are undomesticated perennial plant species. Increasing the human and financial resources available to traditional domestication approaches would hasten future advances in dedicated energy crops, but the perennial nature and large plant sizes inherent to most biomass crops constrains progress. Leveraging modern molecular genetics techniques will allow us to accelerate the domestication process in these species leading to increase average plant and/or stand productivity, improve overall feedstock uniformity and reduce the cost of supplying conversion facilities with biomass feedstocks. By way of example, a fully domesticated Populus clone would accumulate greater carbon allocation in the stem, through the development of a less extensive root system, reduced height and minimal proleptic (i.e., perennial branch formation and growth) branching. The harvest index (i.e., the amount of harvested biomass that can be used in an energy application) would be increased without having to modify net productivity by regulating the distribution of carbon within a plant itself. A domesticated Populus clone would also display minimal or no response to light competition and would have an optimized photoperiod response for each growth environment. Such a plant could be established at high densities, allowing greater per unit area productivity. These plants would also display optimal leaf area indices over the course of the full growing season, releasing vegetative buds as early as possible in the spring and holding leaves as long as possible in the fall. Because the great majority of carbon contained in biomass is present in cell walls in the forms of lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose, the cell walls of a fully domesticated Populus or Panicum plant would be modified to produce optimal feedstocks for energy conversion. Finally, a fully domesticated Populus clone would not produce flowers, leading to greater allocation of biomass to the stem and more importantly, minimizing the chances of gene flow out of the plantation. Many “domestication” genes have been isolated from respective agronomic crops. Genes for height growth, response to competition, branching, stem thickness and cell wall chemistry have been characterized in several species. Utilizing existing or developed genomic databases we can efficiently locate sequence homologs to “domestication” genes in undomesticated biomass species. These native genes can be up- or down-regulated (i.e., over or under expressed) in transformed plants. Preliminary genomics databases for bioenergy relevant species have been developed for Populus, sorghum and soybeans; similar resources need to be created for all bioenergy-relevant plant species.

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Several U.S. DOE documents over the past two-and-a-half years have advocated the development and use of perennial plant species as bioenergy feedstocks. These documents include:

Breaking the Biological Barriers to Cellulosic Ethanol: A Research Roadmap Resulting from the Biomass to Biofuels Workshop

[http://genomicsgtl.energy.gov/biofuels/] Office of Biomass Programs Multi-Year Program Plan 2007-2012

[http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/biomass_feedstocks.html] Biomass as Feedstock for Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion Ton Annual Supply

[http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/final_billionton_vision_report2.pdf]

The species listed generally include: Populus, Panicum, Eucalyptus, willow, Miscanthus, sweetgum, Reed canary grass, energy cane, and sorghum. All of the advocated species are grown as perennials and represent regionally adapted, undomesticated plants. Multiple species selections will be required to capture the 20 to 30 million acres of surplus, excess or idle agricultural lands economically available to biomass crops in the U.S.

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B-Basic: Integrating Bioprocess Engineering and Biological Sciences

Luuk A.M. van der Wielen Director of B-Basic / Department of Biotechnology

Delft University of Technology Julianalaan 67, 2628 BC, Delft, The Netherlands

The growth of the human population requires a parallel growth in availability of materials, fuels and energy. In order to provide these in a sustainable manner and not only to rely on non-renewable fossil resources, the development of bio-based alternatives including novel options to recycle materials is a key item on the agenda of national governments and multinational chemical industries. B-BASIC (Bio-based Sustainable Industrial Chemistry) and KCG (Kluyver Center for Genomics of Industrial Fermentation, www.kluyvercentre.nl ) are public-private partnerships under the umbrella of The Netherlands Science Foundation and the Netherlands Genomics Initiative to develop new production routes using renewable feedstocks and biobased catalysts such as micro organisms and enzymes, harvesting the advancements in functional genomics. Both programs focus on the development of new bio-based production methods for the chemical, pharma and food industry which are rooted in the current explosive increase in fundamental insights in molecular biology through the genomics revolution, combined with advanced bioprocess technology and existing chemical knowledge. Processes will be based on biomass derived, sustainable feedstocks such as biomass derived C-1 (syngas, methanol, methane), C-2 (ethanol), C2-4 (fatty acids), C5-6 (fermentable sugars) and C8+ (natural oils). These feedstocks are abundantly available from today’s massive carbohydrate and the future lignocellulosic feedstocks. The presented concepts also allow linking the novel, clean process concepts to currently available non-renewable feedstocks in a required transition period towards full sustainability.

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The field of biobased production and the product area’s aimed for are performance materials and their (monomeric) building blocks, bulk and fine chemical products as well as fuels which form the basis of the economic vitality of the Dutch chemical, energy and agro-industries. The research program will result in processes which are integrated (bio-) catalytic cascades, use cheap, biobased feedstocks, and require low capital investments, all providing competitive edges in economy and sustainability. The strength of the B-BASIC is due to integrating (a) high yields, rates and selectivity by fermentation and biocatalysis by stress resistant, highly selective microorganisms and biocatalysts, (b) low feedstock costs by novel feedstock engineering concepts, (c) low investments by novel bioprocess engineering concepts. These Dutch initiatives are among the largest coherent European programs on Industrial Biotechnology. It is based on existing cooperations between –among others- TU Delft, Groningen University, Leiden University, TNO-MEP, A&FI and Wageningen University, and a consortium of large and small industries including DSM, AKZO NOBEL, Shell, Paques, FCDF, Nedalco which have proved to be successful and well advanced in the Netherlands. This program exploits these unique assets to its full extent. B-BASIC is also developing a crucial advanced training infrastructure (Life Science and Technology Training Center), initiated with the academic partners to stimulate and attract dutch and foreign students to guarantee the training of future generations of life scientists and engineers.

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Lignocellulosic Enzymes

Liisa Viikari

University of Helsinki, Finland Fuels from lignocellulosiv biomass have a high potential to reduce green house gas emissions, and hence are important means to fulfil the road transport CO2 emissions targets. In order to reach the goals set by the European Directives and the envisioned growth of biofuels during the next decades, it is essential to efficiently utilize the available agricultural and forest residues, as well as novel dedicated crops. An increasingly important aspect is to utilize wastes and raw materials which do not compete with food production. Advanced conversion technologies are, however, needed to produce biofuels, such as ethanol, from a wider range of resources, including lignocellulosic biomass. The major obstacles in the enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulose into sugars are related to the recalcitrance and complex structure of the raw material itself, posing a scientific challenge and opportunity for biotechnical development. During the last 10 years, significant improvements in bioconversion technologies have been obtained. The cost of enzymes is, however, still considered a key barrier to economic production of lignocellulose based sugars and their further conversion to e.g. ethanol. Several approaches to improve the performance of enzymes and to decrease the amount of enzymes needed have been taken by improving individual cellulase components for enhanced stability and activity or complementing or by replacing the set of cellulases by novel proteins. The efficiency of the hydrolysis can expectedly be also improved by enzymes active on other polymers in the matrix, such as hemicellulases, or other rate-limiting enzymes enhancing the hydrolysis. The generally observed decline of the hydrolysis rate during the course of the hydrolysis has been suggested to be due to steric hindrance of enzyme action by biomass components, non-specific binding of enzyme to lignin or enzymes becoming inactivated by products released from the substrate. Thus, the surface chemistry, morphology and interactions of cellulose substrates play a major role in the enzymatic conversion process. The presentation discusses the state of the art of the enzymatic hydrolysis. Opportunities for cooperation between EU and US In spite of the importance of the basic phenomena involved and the great potential of improving the enzyme economy, there is still lack of knowledge and basic understanding on the structural limitations and interactions of the biocatalysts on the actual real lignocellulosic substrates. In Europe, the main raw material basis consists of agricultural lignocellulosic residues, such as straw and corn stover, but also dedicated energy crops and forest or municipal wastes are becoming more important. The complex chemistry of these lignocellulosic raw materials thus sets demands to the enzymes required, and is further complicated by the various pretreatment technologies and process concepts available and being developed. An efficient enzymatic hydrolysis is, however, a prerequisite for any future biomass-to-chemicals conversion processes. The expertise

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areas needed include plant breeding and genetics, lignocellulose processing, fractionation and chemistry, enzymology of lignocellulosic components; protein chemistry and engineering, genetics of production organisms and integrated process concepts. There are thus several areas for potential collaboration in the field of lignocellulose hydrolysis and conversion where US-European collaboration could be beneficial and should be promoted. Both partners have already strong groups with expertise on various areas. Especially fruitful would be collaboration in scientifically and practically complementary areas, such as new analytical methodologies, new raw materials and pretreatment technologies, basic mechanisms of enzymatic action, comparison of new enzymes, etc. To realize this type of collaboration, common research themes should be identified.

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Annex II

Workshop Proposal

Workshop Topic: New Technologies for the Development of Sustainable Energy

Resources Location: Presidio—Golden Gate National Park Date: February 21-22, 2008 Purpose of the Workshop: Given the number of dramatic changes that have occurred in the scientific and economic landscape in 2007, the workshop would take stock of select new research initiatives and programs which are using the tools of biotechnology to contribute to the goal of sustainable, bio-based energy production. Technologies addressed would be synthetic biology, engineering of grains for multiple uses, new crops as fuel sources and economic research challenges.

Presentations would be from leading researchers and economists from the EC and US. The workshop participants would be asked, on day two, to synthesize their discussions to identify opportunities and needs of emerging research (including economic research), and to identify opportunities for US- EC research collaboration. The workshop would include researchers from academia, Federal laboratories, and from private companies.

Attendance: Limited to About 50

Approximately 14 invited speakers, 7 from US and 7 from Europe and about 40 invited participants, 20 US and 20 Europeans Day One Keynote

Panel (1) Engineering Grains for Multiple Uses

Panel (2) Beyond Maize?

Panel (3) Bioenergy Economic Research Challenges

Day Two

Panel (4) Synthetic Biology

Break Out Sessions

Contacts: David Thomassen, DOE Kay Simmons, USDA

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ANNEX III

US-EC Workshop on Biotechnology for Sustainable Bioenergy

AGENDA San Francisco, US

21-22 February 2008

21 FEBRUARY 2008 9:00 US/EC Introduction and welcome

Martha Bair Steinbock, USDA David Thomassen, DOE, Kay Simmons, USDA, Maurice Lex, EC, Maria Fernandez, EC

9:15 Session 1. Energy Feedstocks. To use biotechnological tools to improve the

productivity and composition of biomass feedstocks for optimized conversion to bioenergy. Chairpersons: Michael W. Bevan, John Innes Centre, UK

Judy St. John, USDA-ARS, US Rapporteurs: Wolter Elbersen, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Zeng-yu Wang, Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, US Introduction by chairperson Michael W. Bevan - “Summary of challenges in developing the next generation of bioenergy crops”.

• Chris Somerville, Stanford, US – Cell Wall Synthesis in Model Plants • Felice Cervone, University of Rome, Italy - Improving degradation of biomasses

by improving cell wall digestibility • Gerry Tuskan, ORNL, US – Poplar

10:15 Coffee break

10:45 Session 1 continued • Ulli Schurr, Forschungszentrum Jülich, DE, Improvement of resource use

efficiency of biomass crops • Sarah Hake, USDA-ARS, Albany, California, US

• Uffe Jørgensen, University of Aarhus, Denmark, Breeding and biotechnology perspectives in Miscanthus

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12:00 Lunch break

13:30 Discussions, conclusions and recommendations from session 1

14:30 Session 2. Biotechnological conversion of biomass to bioenergy. Advanced biotechnologies for the conversion of biomass into bio-energy. Chairpersons: Luuk van der Wielen, TU Delf, NL

Tim Gardner, Amyris Biotechnologies, US Rapporteurs: Sally Mackenzie, University of Nebraska, US Alfonso Jaramillo, Ecole Polytechnique, France

Introduction by chairperson Luuk van der Wielen - Bio-energy: integrating Functional Genomics, Advanced Catalysis and Bioprocess Engineering

• Liisa Viikari, University of Helsinki, Finland – Lignocellulosic Enzymes • Bärbel Hahn-Hägerdal, University of Lund, Sweden – Yeasts

15:30 Coffee break

15:00 Session 2 continued • Alfonso Jaramillo, Ecole Polytechnique, FR – Modular hydrogen

• Jay Keasling, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US – Synthetic Biology • Stenbjörn Styring, Uppsala University, Sweden - From natural to artificial

photosynthesis - biomimetic chemistry for the production of hydrogen from solar energy and water

17:00 Discussions, conclusions and recommendations from session 2

22 FEBRUARY 2008 8:30 Session 3. Socio-economic & Environmental Challenges

Chairpersons: Christian Patermann, Ex-Director EC RTD, KBBE Coordinator

Northrhine Westphalia Germany Chavonda Jacobs-Young, National Program Leader, USDA-CSREES, Plant Feedstock Genomics, US

Rapporteurs: Berien Elbersen, Altea, NL Michael Casler, USDA, Madison, WI, US

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Introduction by chairperson C. Patermann - “How to overcome the widening gap between growing energy demand and biomass availability: Environmental, economic and social consequences”.

• Berien Elbersen, Altea, NL – EU biomass potential and environmental constrains • John Sheehan, Live Fuels, Inc., US – Economic Analysis • Jan-Erik Petersen, European Environmental Agency, Denmark, Bioenergy and

global land use in an ecological perspective • Madhua Khanna, University of Illinois • Nadine McCormick, The World Conservation Union, IUCN, The role of policy

instruments in managing the social risks and enhancing the opportunities of applying biotechnology to bioenergy

• Jean-Philippe Denruyter, WWF, Belgium, Environmental perspective 10:30 Coffee break 11:00 Discussions, conclusions and recommendations from session 3 12:00 Presentation and discussions of rapporteur's reports

13:00 Closing

David Thomassen, DOE, Kay Simmons, USDA, Maurice Lex, EC, Maria Fernandez, EC, Line Matthiessen, EC

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ANNEX IV

Agenda for Workshop Field Trip

Visit to USDA-ARS Research Centers in Albany, CA Friday, February 22, 2008

Time Location Activity ARS Participants Research Unit1 1:30 pm

S.F. Hotel Pick up Workshop Participants at S.F. Hotel

Bill Orts & Maureen Whalen

BCE & CIU

2:15 pm2

Albany Centers3, Conference Room 4

Brief orientation Bill Orts & Andy Hammond

Acting WRRC Director; Acting Pacific West Area Director

2:30 pm

WRRC Pilot Plant

Tour & demonstrations

Bill Orts BCE

Biorefinery engineering

Rick Offeman & George Robertson

BCE

Bioproducts & biofuels

Colleen McMahan CIU

Bioproducts Greg Glenn & Iman Syed

BCE

Industrial partnerships

Bill Orts BCE

3:30 pm

Conference Room 4

DOE-ARS Collaborations

Blake Simmons DOE JBEI Vice President, Deconstruction


Sarah Hake PGEC Director


John Vogel GGD

4:00 pm

PGEC & WRRC Greenhouses

Feedstock Development

Maureen Whalen CIU

Brachypodium John Vogel & Roger Thilmony

GGD & CIU

Switchgrass Christian Tobias GGD Maize mutants Sarah Hake PGEC Director Miscanthus Sheila McCormick PGEC 4:30 pm

WRRC Vans Drop off at SF Hotel Bill Orts & Maureen Whalen

BCE & CIU

1, Research Units, BCE, Bioproducts and Chemistry Engineering; CIU, Crop Improvement and Utilization; GGD, Genomes and Gene Discovery; 2, Traffic depending 3, WRRC, Western Regional Research; PGEC, Plant Gene Expression; JBEI, Joint BioEnergy Institute (DOE)

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Research Projects Visited Project: Evolutionary enzyme design for improved biorefining of crops and residues and pilot plant. Scientist: William Orts, Bioproduct Chemistry and Engineering Research Unit, USDA-ARS, Western Regional Research Center Email: [email protected] Project: Biorefinery engineering Scientists : Rick Offeman and George Robertson, Bioproduct Chemistry and Engineering Research Unit, USDA-ARS, Western Regional Research Center Email: [email protected]; [email protected] Project: Hypoallergenic natural rubber from the desert shrub guayule Maureen Whalen, Crop Improvement & Utilization Research Unit, USDA-ARS, Western Regional Research Center, email: [email protected] Project: Brachypodium – an experimental model for future genetic modification of grasses and straws, including insertional mutagenesis of Brachypodium distachyon, including research supported by DOE/USDA Feedstock Genomics Program Scientist: John Vogel and Roger Thilmony, USDA-ARS, Western Regional Research Center email: [email protected]; [email protected] Project: Development of agriculturally-derived biopolymer composites for non-food applications. Gregory Glenn and Iman Syed, Bioproduct Chemistry and Engineering Research Unit, USDA-ARS, Western Regional Research Center [email protected] DOE and USDA-ARS Collaborations Blake Simmons, DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute, Vice President, Deconstruction project Project: Switch grass genetic resources; Linkage analysis appropriate for comparative genome analysis and trait selection in switchgrass, including research supported by DOE/USDA Feedstock Genomics Program Christian Tobias, USDA-ARS, Genomics and Gene Discovery Unit, Western Regional Research Center [email protected] Project: Positional cloning in maize of genes that regulate plant architecture; maize mutants and plant architecture Scientist: Sarah Hake, Plant Gene Expression Center, [email protected] Project: Molecular developmental genetics of pollen and pollen-pistil interactions in crop plants including Miscanthus research Scientist: Sheila McCormick, [email protected]

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ANNEX V

Workshop Participants EU Participants Michael W. BEVAN John Innes Centre Address: Tel (44)(01603)450520 Direct Fax. (44)(01603)450025 [email protected] http://www.jic.ac.uk/STAFF/michael-bevan/ Felice CERVONE Dipartimento di Biologia Vegetale Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza" Piazzale Aldo Moro 00185 Roma, Italy Tel. +39-06-4991-2641 Fax +39-06-4991-2446 Email: [email protected] Jean-Philippe DENRUYTER WWF European Policy Office 168 avenue de Tervurenlaan Box 20 1150 Brussels Belgium Direct: +32 2 7400927 Switchboard: +32 2 743 8800 Fax: +32 2 743 8819 E-mail: [email protected] http://www.bioenergywiki.net/index.php/Jean-Philippe_Denruyter Berien ELBERSEN Alterra Landscape Centre P.O.Box 47 6700 AA Wageningen The Netherlands +31 (0)317 474788 (phone) +31 (0)317 419000 (fax) [email protected] www.alterra.nl

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Wolter ELBERSEN Wageningen UR Business Unit Biobased Products Biomass and Bioenergy P.O.Box 17 6700 AA Wageningen E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +31(317)-475338 www.biobasedproducts.nl Bärbel HAHN-HÄGERDAL Lund University Department of Applied Microbiology P.O. Box 124 SE-221 00 LUND, SWEDEN +46 46 222 8428 +46 46 222 4203 E-mail: [email protected] http://www.tmb.lth.se/bhh.htm Alfonso JARAMILLO Laboratoire de BIOCHIMIE. CNRS UMR7654 Ecole Polytechnique Route de Saclay 91128 PALAISEAU Cedex Tel: +33-1-69334861 - FAX: +33-1-69334909 Email: [email protected] Email2: [email protected] http://www.synbiosafe.eu/index.php?page=biomodular-h2 Uffe JØRGENSEN UNIVERSITY OF AARHUS Faculty of Agricultural Sciences Dept. of Agroecology and Environment Research Centre Foulum, P.O. Box 50, DK-8830, P.O. BOX 50 DK-8830 Tjele, Denmark Phone: +45 8999 1900 Phone direct: +45 8999 1762 Email: [email protected] www.agrsci.org Nadine McCORMICK Business and Biodiversity Programme The World Conservation Union (IUCN) Tel: +41 (0) 22 999 0257 [email protected]

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www.iucn.org/energy Christian PATERMANN KBBE - Northrhine Westphalia, Germany Ex-Director EC DG RTD D-53299 Bonn, Heidebergenstrasse 53 Tel: 00 49 228 484 671 Email: [email protected] Jan-Erik PETERSEN European Environment Agency Kongens Nytorv 6 DK-1050 Copenhagen K Tel.: +45 3336 7133 Email: [email protected] http://reports.eea.europa.eu/eea_report_2006_7/en Uli SCHURR Institute for Chemistry and Dynamics of the Geosphere, Improvement of resource use efficiency of biomass crops ICG-3: Phytosphere Forschungszentrum Jülich 52425 Jülich Germany phone: xx49 2461 613073 fax: xx49 2461 612492 [email protected] http://www.fz-juelich.de/icg/icg-3/index.php?index=3 Stenbjörn STYRING Department of Photochemistry and Molecular Science Molecular Biomimetics Ångström laboratory Uppsala University Box 523 SE 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden phone: +46-(0)18-471 6580 Mobile: +46-(0)70-425 0991 Fax: +46-(0)18-471 6844 e-mail: [email protected] www.fotomol.uu.se Liisa VIIKARI Liisa Viikari University of Helsinki Department of Applied Chemistry and Microbiology PO Box 27 (Latokartanonkaari 11)

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FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland Tel. +358 9 191 58653 Fax. +358 9 191 58475 e-mail [email protected] http://www.mm.helsinki.fi/tiedotus/2007/070305_viikari.htm Luuk A.M. van der WIELEN Department of Biotechnology, TU Delft Julianalaan 67 2628 BC Delft The Netherlands T + 31 15 2782361 / ..63 F +31 15 2133142 Email: [email protected] www.bt.tudelft.nl www.b-basic.nl EU Observer Bianca OUDSHOFF Science and Technology Attaché Netherlands Office for Science and Technology 901 Mariners Island Boulevard, suite 595 San Mateo, Ca 94404 Office: (1) 650 403 0222 Cell: (1) 650 575 7786 e-mail: [email protected] European Commission participants Laurent BOCHEREAU European Commission Directorate-General for External Relations Counselor, Head of Science, Technology and Education Section European Union - Delegation of the European Commission to the United States 2300 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037 Telephone: (202) 862-9500 e-mail: [email protected] Maria FERNANDEZ GUTIERREZ Scientific officer European Commission Directorate-General for Research Directorate E - Biotechnology, Agriculture and Food Research

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E02 - Biotechnology Telephone No. +32 (0)2 2987676 e-mail: [email protected] Maurice LEX Scientific Officer European Commission Directorate-General for Research Directorate E - Biotechnology, Agriculture and Food Research E02 – Biotechnology Telephone No. +32 (0)2 2965619 e-mail: [email protected] Line MATTHIESSEN-GUYADER Head of Unit "Horizontal aspects and Coordination" Directorate E "Biotechnology, Agriculture and Food" European Commission - DG Research SDME 8/54 B - 1049 Brussels Tel.: +32.2.295.28.53 Fax: +32.2.299.18.60 e-mail : [email protected]

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US Participants Michael CASLER – switchgrass genomics, sustainability, bioenergy crops U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center 1925 Linden Drive Madison, WI 53706-1108 Email: [email protected] Phone: 608-890-0065 Mike EDGERTON – soybean genomics Monsanto 1 Yale Avenue St. Louis, MO 63130 Email: [email protected] Phone: 314-694-7621 Tim GARDNER – microbiology, bioenergy Amyris Biotechnologies, Inc. 5980 Horton Street, Ste. 450 Emeryville, CA 94608 Phone: 510-450-0761 Email: [email protected] Sarah HAKE - maize US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service Plant Gene Expression Center 800 Buchanan Street Albany, CA 94710 Email: [email protected] Phone: 510-559-5907 Website: http://www.pgec.usda.gov/Hake/SHresearch1.html Madhu KHANNA – agricultural economics Institute for Genomic Biology Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics University of Illinois 440 Mumford Hall 1301 W. Gregory Drive M/C 710 Urbana, IL 61801 Email: [email protected] Phone: 217-333-5176 Website: http://www.ace.uiuc.edu/ViewFaculty.aspx?NetID=khanna1

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Jay KEASLING – synthetic biology c/o Keasling Research Group Berkeley Center for Synthetic Biology University of California, Berkeley 717 Potter Street Berkeley, CA 94710 Email: [email protected] Phone: 510-642-4862 Website: http://keaslinglab.lbl.gov/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Sally A. MACKENZIE – Plant Science Initiative, mitochondria Ralph and Alice Raikes Chair, Plant Sciences N305 Beadle Center for Genetics Research University of Nebraska Lincoln, NE 68588-0660 Email: [email protected] Phone: 402-472-6997 Website: http://psiweb.unl.edu/mackenzie Eric MATHUR – bioprospecting, metagenomics Synthetic Genomics, Inc. Vice President, Metagenomics 11149 North Torrey Pines Road, Suite 100 La Jolla, California 92037 Email : [email protected] Phone: 858-754-2903 Website: www.SyntheticGenomics.com Sabeeha MERCHANT – chlamydomonas, chlorophyll biosynthesis, trace metals University of California at Los Angeles Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry BOX 951569 607 Charles E. Young Drive East Los Angeles, California 90095-1569 Email: [email protected] Phone: 310-825-8300 Website: http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/merchant/#contact John SHEEHAN - economic analysis, algae-based biofuels Vice President of Strategy and Sustainable Development Live Fuels, Inc. Direct Mailing Address 7044 Fox Paw Trail Littleton, CO 80125 Headquarters

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1455 Adams Drive, Ste 1081 Menlo Park, CA 94025 Email: [email protected] Phone: 303-92-8514 Website: http://www.livefuels.com/ Chris SOMERVILLE – cell wall synthesis in model plants Department of Plant Biology Carnegie Institution 260 Panama Street Stanford, CA 94305 Email: [email protected] Phone: 650-325-1521, ext. 203 (phone) http://carnegiedpb.stanford.edu/research/research_csomerville.php Gerry TUSKAN – poplar genomics Oak Ridge National Laboratory P.O. Box 2008, MS-6422 Building 1062, Room 215 Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6422 Email: [email protected] Phone: 865-576-8141 Website: http://www.esd.ornl.gov/PGG/tuskan_bio.htm Zeng-yu WANG– Transgenics in forage and biofuel crops Associate Professor, Forage Improvement Division The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation 2510 Sam Noble Parkway Ardmore, Oklahoma 73401 Email: [email protected] Phone: 580-2246830 Website: http://www.noble.org/ForgBiot/Staff/Wang.htm

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U.S. Federal Agency Participants Chavonda JACOBS-YOUNG National Program Leader USDA National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Programs Phone: 202-401-6188 Fax: 202-401-6071 Mail: 1400 Independence Ave, SW Washington, DC 20250-2225 Express Delivery: Rm 2420 Waterfront Centre, 800 9th St SW Washington, DC 20024 www.csrees.usda.gov Mark SEGAL Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics USEPA 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW (7403M) Washington, DC 20460 Phone: 202-564-7644 Fax: 202-564-7460 Email: [email protected] Kay SIMMONS National Program Leader Plant Genetics & Grain Crops USDA, Agricultural Research Service National Program Staff 5601 Sunnyside Ave., Room 4-2202 George Washington Carver Center Beltsville, MD 20705 Phone: 301-504-5560 Fax: 301-504-6191 Email: [email protected] Martha STEINBOCK U.S. Executive Secretary US-EC Task Force on Biotechnology Research Deputy Assistant Administrator Office of Technology Transfer Agricultural Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture 5601 Sunnyside Avenue Beltsville, MD 20705-5131 Phone: 301-504-6905 Fax: 301-504-5060

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Email: [email protected] Judith B. ST JOHN Deputy Administrator Crop Production and Protection 5601 Sunnyside Avenue Room 4-2204 GWCC-BLTSVL Beltsville, MD 20705-5139 Phone: 301-504-6252 Fax: 301-504-4663 Email: [email protected] David THOMASSEN Chief Scientist Office of Biological & Environmental Research SC-23 / Germantown Building U.S. Department of Energy 1000 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC 20585-1290 Phone: 301-903-9817 Fax: 301-903-5051 Email: [email protected]

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The EC- US Task Force Workshop on Biotechnology for Sustainable Bioenergy focused on key challenges facing the growth and development of bioenergy as a sustainable alternative to today’s reliance on petroleum-based liquid transportation fuels: bioenergy feedstocks, biotechnology for biomass-to-bioenergy, and socio-economic and environmental challenges. Participants identified scientific challenges, research priorities, and knowledge gaps and recommended both biotechnology research and opportunities for US-EC collaboration. New resources, tools, and interdisciplinary interactions are needed to develop the next generation of biomass crops; standards are needed to improve processes for biomass conversion to biofuels; and bio-energy crops and farming practices are needed that minimize competition with food crops, use of resources such as water, and inputs such as fertilizers.

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