In the fight against global warming, carbon is key.

Stabilizing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere so we can all continue to live in the type of climate we ‘re accustomed to is going to require drastic reductions in the amount of fossil fuels used to power our vehicles, operate our businesses and heat our homes.

Meeting these challenges will be difficult, and things certainly won ‘t happen overnight. But it is absolutely vital that we start implementing efficiency measures now, while researchers continue their efforts to develop and perfect the renewable energy technologies of the future.

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Milwaukee–Gov. Jim Doyle will be the first recipient of a prestigious award given by the nation’s largest group of ecologists at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America on August 3. The award recognizes a regional or local policymaker who has an outstanding record of informing their political decision-making with ecological science.

“We are pleased to honor a public figure that has a sharp appreciation for local and global ecological issues and works to use sound ecological science to inform decisions at the state level and beyond,” said ESA President Norm Christensen. (more…)

Switchgrass grown on marginal farm acreage could be an efficient renewable fuel source while also protecting wildlife habitat and water quality, according to “Growing Wisconsin Energy,” a study by Agrecol Corp.

Switchgrass is a perennial grass native to Wisconsin.

The study produced by the Madison-based seed company with a grant from the state Department of Agriculture found that converting native grasses into renewable fuel could be a profitable enterprise for farmers and a relatively inexpensive fuel source for businesses and schools.

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Abstract

“The ammonia fiber expansion (AFEX) process has been shown to be an effective pretreatment for lignocellulosic biomass. Technological advances in AFEX have been made since previous cost estimates were developed for this process. Recent research has enabled lower overall ammonia requirements, reduced
ammonia concentrations, and reduced enzyme loadings while still maintaining high conversions of glucan and xylan to monomeric sugars. A new ammonia recovery approach has also been developed. Capital and operating costs for the AFEX process, as part of an overall biorefining system producing fuel ethanol
from biomass have been developed based on these new research results. These new cost estimates are presented and compared to previous estimates. Two biological processing options within the overall biorefinery are also compared, namely consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) and enzymatic hydrolysis followed
by fermentation. Using updated parameters and ammonia recovery configurations, the cost of ethanol production utilizing AFEX is calculated. These calculations indicate that the minimum ethanol selling price (MESP) has been reduced from $1.41/gal to $0.81/gal.”

Read the entire paper here.

*GLBRC Researcher Bruce Dale contributed to this paper.

At last month’s international biotech convention in San Diego, one of the seminars focused on the work underway at three U.S. Department of Energy laboratories – including the lab in Madison that will be funded with $135 million over five years. With good reason, a description of the seminar included cautionary phrases such as “overcoming cost barriers” and “formidable scientific and technological challenges.”

Replacing or even supplementing fossil fuels such as petroleum won’t happen overnight. It will take years of research, testing and perhaps constructing new infrastructure before oil becomes a less-than-dominant part of our energy portfolio.

“The first kerosene distilled from oil was used in 1853 to replace whale oil to light American homes,” said Brent Erickson, who leads the Industrial and Environmental section of BIO, which hosted the San Diego convention. “It took 125 years for the oil industry to develop oil refineries to what they are today – highly complex and technologically advanced enough to take a barrel of oil and turn it into myriad products.

“We need to think about biofuels in the same light: Ethanol from corn is just the beginning. The second- and third-generation biofuels are coming,” Erickson said.

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Watch Tom Still’s interview on WISN-TV’s “Upfront” show here.

Plant biologists, geneticists, biochemists, bacteriologists, chemical engineers and computer scientists collide in the world of bioenergy, where the search for viable solutions demands intelligence of all kinds. The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has harnessed the intellectual heft to take on this challenge, and they have hired a translator to connect researchers who would normally live in entirely separate research worlds.

That translator — and the new scientific programs manager for the GLBRC — is Steve Slater, a plant and bacterial geneticist.

“I may spend the morning talking to a computer scientist and the afternoon talking to a biochemist,” Slater says. “I know enough to speak the language of all these groups, figure out their needs and make sure we can secure the resources to meet these needs.”

(more…)

Most scientists can’t help but daydream about their research projects, which is why you’ll often find John Ralph doodling on restaurant napkins. The University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of biochemistry often interrupts his meals with a quick sketch, usually depicting some piece of the structure of lignin, the subject of his research for the past 36 years.

But amid deepening concern over the world’s dependency on oil, Ralph’s napkin art might turn out to be as valuable as a rare Rembrandt. Lignin — a tough, glue-like substance that keeps plant cell walls from falling apart — presently stands as one of the chief barriers to making fuel from grasses and woody plants, which most experts see as a preferable alternative to ethanol made from corn kernels or other food sources. And few people in the world know more about lignin than Ralph, who until earlier this year was a scientist with the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center at UW-Madison. During the past year, the affable New Zealander has been the subject of an intense bidding war among the three bioenergy research centers created last year by the U.S. Department of Energy, including UW-Madison’s Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC). Ralph recently accepted an offer to join the GLBRC team, which means he’ll now work full-time on achieving the holy grail of plant-based fuel.

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By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer

Last Updated: June 30, 2008: 3:42 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Want to help the country save a quick million barrels of oil a day? Drive 5% less. Slow down. Inflate your tires.

Those three steps would reduce U.S. oil consumption by 1.3 million barrels a day immediately, according to the Alliance to Save Energy, a conservation group running an efficiency campaign backed not only by environmental groups but also the auto and oil industries.

That’s nearly twice the estimated daily oil production that could come from drilling in the Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, according to the government’s Energy Information Administration.

According to Julius Pretterebner, a vehicles and alternative-fuels expert at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consultancy that does a lot of work for the oil companies, how fast people drive and how quickly they accelerate is responsible for 10% to 30% of fuel consumption.

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