Industrial biotech key to national goals - DOE

25 March 2007 16:09  [Source: ICIS news]

ORLANDO, Florida (ICIS news)--Biotechnology is essential to achieving energy security, competing in the global economy, and responding to global warming, a US government official said at an industrial biotechnology conference Saturday.

Alexander Karsner, Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, US Department of Energy, said at the BIO’s World Congress of Industrial Biotechnology and  Bioprocessing that they had been “fundamental” to the agenda he has pursued at the DoE since assuming his position there a year ago.

“I’m grateful for everything you do to ensure that our agenda stays market-focused towards commercialisation and deployment as we rebalance the national portfolio when we seek to end our addiction to oil and address the serious challenge of global climate change,” he said.

“Secretary [of Energy] Bodman believes success in creating a biobased economy is going to be the most important part of his legacy,” he added.

Karsner noted the biotech industry’s great accomplishments in the US, which he described as “the most hospitable country on the planet for agricultural and industrial biotechnologies.”

Pointing to the development of new biofuels, biomaterials, and biomanufacturing processes, he praised the creativity of the industry and, in a nod to the setting – the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort – he referred to his audience as the “imagineers” who were bringing tomorrowland to main street.

“Of course, not everyone wants to come with  you,” he acknowledged. “There are a few doubters who don’t really understand what the biotechnology and chemical industries are doing to transform our energy future.”

Karsner said he has spent most of time since joining the DoE determining how best to use the government’s resources to move the nations assets into a “more forward-leaning posture” in regard to energy security, global competitiveness and climate change.

One tool is legislation, he noted, observing that just this past week, President George Bush had again asked Congress for a new alternative fuel standard that would address modernization of CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) and vehicular efficiency with the goal of reducing gasoline consumption by 20% within the next ten years – the so-called 20-and-10 program.

Three-quarters of the 20-and-10 goal would come through displacement by alternative fuels, and a quarter through vehicle efficiency.

“It’s the most far-reaching, quantitatively ambitious in size and scope and timetable of any domestic energy policy that has yet been taken by this nation or any other nation,” Karsner said.

The DoE has long focused on science and technology, but Karsner said it also has to ensure that durable, predictable, long-term policies are in place to stimulate commercial markets, because penetration by biobased fuels will require “unprecedented levels of sustained capital formation.”

By: Clay Boswell
+1 713 525 2653

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