Industrial Biotech - Novel Solutions to Global Energy Challenges

Chris Somerville, director of the Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, imagines what the United States’ energy future could look like with advanced research in this presentation at BIO’s Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy in Vancouver Sept. 10.

Somerville calls for production of “responsible biofuels” that do not displace food production, do not convert undeveloped land, do not increase erosion or runoff, and show a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through a full life cycle analysis.

“There is adequate land and a number of possible feedstocks that can be used to produce biofuels. Further, there are new technologies that can lead to better biofuels,” Somerville says.