UC Berkeley wins $500 million biofuels center

“Officials of oil giant BP awarded a $500 million biofuels research program to a consortium led by researchers at the QB3 facility at the University of California, Berkeley. The consortium includes the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley Lab in Berkeley and the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek as well as the University of Illinois, which will provide agricultural expertise. In June, BP said it will spend $500 million over the next 10 years to establish the BP Energy Biosciences Institute, which it described as the ‘first facility of its kind in the world.’ The facility will be a dedicated biosciences energy research laboratory attached to a major academic center in the United States or the United Kingdom.”