Tackle climate change, create jobs, preserve innovation

BIO has long championed the advancement of biotechnologies to tackle climate change, create jobs, and build resiliency—and yesterday, the Biden administration announced a plan that would aim to do that.

Yesterday, the Biden-Harris administration announced “an ambitious innovation effort to create American jobs while tackling the climate crisis.” 

This includes the launch of a Climate Innovation Working Group, which will “help coordinate and strengthen federal government-wide efforts” on reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and building resiliency.

The administration outlined key planks of the working group’s agenda, which includes “new, sustainable fuels for aircraft and ships,” as well as “innovative soil management, plant biologies, and agricultural techniques to remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it in the ground.”

Hey, this sounds familiar…BIO has long championed the advancement of biotechnologies to increase sustainable agriculture and sustainable fuels. Here are a few examples:

• In BIO’s 100 Days of Innovation blueprint, we call for driving economic revival and resiliency byincentivizing the adoption of advanced biotechnology solutions, including sustainable agricultural practices and low-carbon fuels.
• Several BIO recommendations were incorporated into last year’s congressional climate action plan—including the need to advance carbon sequestration in agriculture and other biotechnologies to allow the sector to be part of the solution to climate change.
• BIO submitted recommendations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), stressing the importance of bolstering the bioeconomy to drive innovation—including enhancements in agriculture and food production, sustainable fuels, renewable chemicals, and biobased products. 

Where will they start? The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $100 million in funding to support “transformational low-carbon energy technologies.”

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This week, the Bayh-Dole Coalition submitted a white paper to President Biden explaining the long-lasting impact of the Bayh-Dole Act and urging his administration to preserve and protect this important legislation. Here’s what you need to know.

What’s Bayh-Dole again? In a nutshell, the bipartisan Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act (a.k.a. Bayh-Dole):

• Empowers universities, small businesses, and non-profit institutions to take ownership of inventions made with federally funded research, so they can license these inventions for further applied R&D and broader public use.
• Encourages the private-sector investment needed to turn basic government-funded biomedical research into tested and approved products that benefit patients, requires these products to be manufactured domestically, and ensures royalties for universities to further advance basic research and education.

It’s “spurred decades of public-private sector collaboration,”says Bayh-Dole Coalition Executive Director Joseph P. Allen, including $1.7 trillion in U.S. economic output, 6 million jobs, and around 300 drugs on the market.

And it’s more important than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic, because it “helped set the stage for the public-private partnerships that are essential to developing a vaccine and effective treatments against the novel coronavirus,” explained the law’s co-author Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) in Roll Call.  

The white paper explains how the Biden administration can stay true to the law’s intent and protect America’s robust innovation ecosystem—read the whole thing.

“The Biden administration should uphold the precedent set by past administrations, both Democratic and Republican, that rejects using Bayh-Dole’s march-in provision as a government price-setting mechanism for successfully commercialized inventions,” continued Allen. “Senators Bayh and Dole did not intend for the legislation’s march-in provision to be used as a price control. Abusing this provision would upend the research, development, and commercialization system that supports millions of U.S. jobs and makes America the world’s most innovative nation.”

For more information on Bayh-Dole and why it matters, visit bayhdolecoalition.org or check out our infographic.

President Biden’s Friday: Meeting with bipartisan governors and mayors to discuss COVID-19 relief, lunch with the veep, and receiving an economic briefing from Treasury Secretary Yellen before heading to Camp David.

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: The impeachment trial continues in the Senate. In the House, committees are finishing up the budget reconciliation process on the coronavirus relief package; the $1.9 trillion package is expected to be assembled next week, per POLITICO Day Ahead.