On May 14, 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $35 million in funding for 15 research projects focused on reducing the carbon footprint of biofuel production. Housed at colleges, laboratories, and universities in nine states, these projects aim to advance new technologies to decarbonize biorefining processes in the agriculture, energy, and transportation sectors. Funding awards are supported by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) through its “Energy and Carbon Optimized Synthesis for the Bioeconomy” (ECOSynBio) program. The 15 selected teams will research five methods to optimize biofuel production:

• Carbon-optimized fermentation strains that avoid carbon dioxide (CO₂) waste;
• Engineered organisms that can use a mix of different sources of energy and carbon and avoid evolving CO₂;
• Biomass-derived sugar or carbon oxide gas fermentation with internal CO₂ recycling;
• Cell-free carbon-optimized biocatalytic biomass conversion and/or CO₂ use; and
• Cross-cutting carbon-optimized bioconversion methods that have the potential for high-impact emission reductions.

Additional information about the winning projects is available here.

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