Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Designer Biofuels

Making fuel from plants isn't new. For centuries people have been turning plant matter into alcohol. (bring up lab sound) In fact, the basic recipe for moonshine? ? grind up a plant - like corn - into sugar water .. add yeast and ? ferment. But alcohol can also run engines.
LAB sound up .. and fade under to cross fade with room tone).
That?s basically what they are doing here in Emeryville at the new Joint Bioenergy Institute, or (?Jay-Bay?), a project of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, UC-Berkeley and other research institutions.
KEASLING 1: "If you think about a plant it?s really sugar that makes up a large fraction of the plant maybe half of the plant material. ?:06

Jay Keasling is a professor of chemical engineering at UC Berkeley.. He heads up JBEI which is funded by a 125-million dollar grant from the Department of Energy .
KEASLING 2: "What we're trying to do overall is break that plant cell wall back down into sugars, and then take the sugars and turn them into fuels.? :14
But breaking down the tough cell walls of plants isn't easy.
KEASLING 3: "Cell walls have evolved to be strong so that a plant stands sturdy. And so that it is not degraded by all of the organisms that are attacking it in the environment. :12
Keasling and his colleagues are trying to do three things: find the plants, known as feedstocks, that produce energy most efficiently, like switchgrass and wood chips., Second, find ways to quickly and inexpensively, break down the cell walls of those plants. Finally, they are looking at microbes that will help convert those sugars into alcohol, which can be used as fuel. (Cross fade room tone with lab sounds) It may be one of the world?s most important chemistry projects in the coming decade.
KEASLING 4: (shaking sound) ?We originally start out with growth medium that contains the sugar that is very clear? (fade down)? : 06.
Keasling is standing next to what looks like a small refrigerator with a glass door. Insides are flasks full of tiny microbes that are heated and shaken so they will grow as quickly as possible.
KEASLING 5: : And you see this is very cloudy, very dense and these microbes have been growing a few days hopeful producing our product.? :06
A product that Keasling says will be better than corn ethanol, our biofuel of choice for the past three decades. (fade out lab sound) Growing Corn for fuel presents a number of problems. It competes with the food supply., Iit delivers lower mileage than , gasoline and you can't transport it through traditional pipelines. So, trucks and trains carry corn ethanol spewing pollution. (start to bring lab sound up ).
LAB SOUND up and fade under?.
Welcome to the labs of LS9, a biofuels company in San Carloss This Silicon Valley start- up began two years ago., The founders wanted to make the perfect biofuel - so they decided to make a type of synthetic petroleum. (Cross fade lab sound with room tone under cut).

PAL: ?Because it can plug directly into the existing infrastructure in terms of pipe lines in terms of refineries in terms of vehicles on the road today.? :07

Gregory Pal, with LS9, says the company is using standard microbes such as e.Ccoli and yeast to break down plant matter,e into a pure petroleum replacement. Pal says the cost of their product needs to be brought down so that it can be mass-produced.

PAL: ?\We feel that you have to produce a product that is competitive with crude oil at about 45 to 50 dollars a barrel. So we believe we will be able to get to those levels of production and have our first commercial plant up and running within three years// :13 (tight edit)
(For TCR - Several other California companies are working on turning plant matter into fuel as well as converting algae and trash into biodiesel. But .... )
The answer to our fossil fuel crisis could come from someplace more extreme than Silicon Valley? like the jungles of Costa Rica, where (bring up room tone) Bay Area researchers prospecting for better microbes are looking at the digestive enzymes from termites.
HUGENHOLTZ: ?Costa Rica is termite heaven. There are just literally tens, uh, hundreds of species.? :05

Phil Hugenholtz (U-gen-holtz) is a microbiologist at the Department of Energy?s Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek.

?We went to Costa Rica. We found a nest of termites and we then dissected the termites. This is a pretty gruesome process where you get a pair of tweezers and grab the termite by the neck??

We?ll save you from the details of the autopsy. Basically, Hugenholtz and his collegues removed the digestive tracks of about 200 of the wood chewing pests. What they found is that termites make great bioconverters.

HUGENHOLTZ: ?They can take wood and chew it down into small particles which then ends up in their stomachs and in the stomachs the micro-organisms can take these small particles of wood which are just chains of sugars and break them down to sugars./ Tight edit.

Hugenholtz believes that natural process could hold the key to an endless source of alternative fuel. Researchers expect it will take about five years to develop a biofuel that costs as much as a gallon of gasoline. (room tone out) But there are questions about whether biofuels are the best solution. Two new studies out this month suggest that the process of clearing land for biofuel farming may generate more greenhouse gases than was previously thought. And we may not have enough arable land to grow crops that will feed the world?s increasing appetite for fuel. For Quest, I?m Andrea Kissack, KQED radio news.