Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council launches new centre
Article Type: News From: Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, Volume 20, Issue 4
The UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has launched a £2.7 million centre to provide the science to underpin and develop the important and emerging UK sustainable bioenergy sector. Sustainable bioenergy offers the potential to provide a significant source of clean, low carbon and secure energy, and to generate thousands of new “green collar”jobs. It uses non-food crops, such as willow, industrial and agricultural waste products and inedible parts of crops, such as straw, and so does not take products out of the food chain. This centre is focussed on six research hubs of academic and industrial partners, based at each of the Universities of Cambridge, Dundee, York and Rothamsted Research and two at the University of Nottingham. A further seven universities and institutes are involved and 15 industrial partners across the hubs are contributing approximately £7 million of the funding.
The Centre’s research activities will encompass many different stages of bioenergy production, from widening the range of materials that can be the starting point for bioenergy, to improving the crops used by making them grow more efficiently, to changing plant cell walls. The Centre will also analyse the complete economic and environmental life-cycle of potential sources of bioenergy.
