Good morning and thank you, Jay for introducing me.

Representative McNerny, Dr. Steve Chu, Dr. Anna Palmisano, members of JBEI, honored guests, friends and family: Welcome to the future.

In 2006 President Bush challenged America to end its addiction to oil. His “20 in 10” plan called for the reduction of America’s projected gasoline use by 20 percent in ten years. In response Congress passed, and the President signed, the Energy Independence and Security Act, which imposes a more stringent Renewable Fuel Standard that requires the production of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022.

Of that, 21 billion gallons must be advanced renewable fuels.

To meet this goal we need, essentially, to go from zero to 21 billion gallons of advanced renewable fuels in less than 15 years. And we need to do it in a sustainable way.

Many people seem to regard this as a tall order. But this is America, where we have made a habit of accomplishing the seemingly impossible, especially in the areas of science and technology, and especially at the Department of Energy’s network of world class facilities including our national laboratories.

America can—indeed is—displacing some of the transportation fuels used everyday with alternative fuels like corn-based ethanol and biodiesel. The challenge before us is to find ways to develop a new generation of biofuels, including fuels made from cellulose, algae and other non-food products. And fuels that are compatible with the existing energy infrastructure like renewable diesel, green gasoline and bio-butanol or even new more efficient high carbon fuels. And we must find ways to get them to the marketplace faster.

This is what brings us here today, to dedicate the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute, whose mission is the pursuit of transformational discoveries in basic science that will enable us to develop this next generation of biofuels.

Though he is not with us, I want to congratulate Dr. Ray Orbach and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science for the fine work they have done over the past year to bring us to this point.

America cannot sustain the level of biofuels production needed to meet our future energy requirements if we do not expand our ethanol production beyond food stocks like corn. We must move to the next level. That is why this facility, along with two other bioenergy research centers, have been established and funded by the Department of Energy.

According to the International Energy Agency, world energy demand will increase by 50 percent by the year 2030. To ensure America’s energy security, now and into the future, we must have a robust, vibrant and sustainable next-generation biofuels industry here in the United States. That’s why this Joint Bio Energy Institute is so important.

This next-generation of sustainable biofuels will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and imported oil. And they will greatly reduce net carbon dioxide emissions.

We must continue to make smart policy choices, and we in the federal government are focusing much of our attention today on sustainability issues and on building the knowledgebase to better guide us in developing biofuels in a sustainable fashion. Yet, as my friend Dr. Orbach continually emphasizes, their development poses substantial scientific and technological challenges surmountable by the kind of transformational breakthroughs that only fundamental research can produce.

And this center, along with the BioEnergy Science Center—led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory—and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in partnership with Michigan State University—has been established and funded by the Department of Energy to develop ways to produce the next generation of biofuels in cost effective and sustainable ways.

They are among the most important initiatives undertaken during my time as Secretary of Energy, and are the result of a per-facility investment of $35 million in start-up and operating funds from the Department, and of a continuing commitment through Fiscal Year 2012 for a total planned investment of $405 million.

JBEI is the product of an extraordinary partnership between six institutions: Three of The Department’s National Laboratories: Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia; Two universities—UC Berkeley and UC Davis; and the Carnegie Institution for Science—under the leadership of Jay Keasling, one of the nation’s foremost synthetic biologists, especially in the area of the metabolic engineering of microorganisms.

The JBEI team has done a terrific job of standing up a major research center in record time. They have leased a new building, purchased and installed equipment, recruited scores of graduate students and post docs, developed sound management plans and structures, and built an integrated research team to attack the problem of creating cost-effective cellulosic biofuels on multiple fronts.

What has been achieved, in just over a year’s time, is truly impressive.

Located on the top floor is a state-of-the-art, fully equipped, modern systems biology laboratory, filled with the latest equipment and staffed by a team led by some of America’s leading scientists.

Real progress has already been made in their research: Experimenting with a new pretreatment process using ionic liquids that could potentially compress the time required to deconstruct plant fiber to yield sugars that can then be converted to fuels.

And the successful re-engineering of microbes to produce hydrocarbon molecules, opening up the possibility of eventually developing not just cellulosic ethanol, but also cellulosic gasoline, cellulosic diesel, cellulosic jet fuel and, potentially, other products made from biomass.

These are just two highlights of the progress achieved on many different paths of discovery during JBEI’s first year.

To accomplish all this in one year is remarkable, so please join me in congratulating Jay Keasling and the JBEI team and also Steve Chu and the staff at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for a successful start-up of this important venture.

I want to add that a major investment such as we are making in these centers is an outgrowth of one of our essential missions: the support for basic physical science research, directly and through our network of world class facilities like this one.

But our National Laboratories’ research scientists typically think in terms of research reports, not business plans.

This is understandable; they do what they are trained to do.

But the marketplace needs to have access to the innovations they produce, the impressive advances in science and technology they create.

As someone who was trained in and taught chemical engineering at M.I.T. I can tell you that I understand the scientist’s point of view. But as a successful venture capitalist, I understand this issue from the business side too.

The development of a business plan requires a skill set rarely found in a laboratory, and the need for such skills, in my judgment, nevertheless exists here and elsewhere within the departmental complex.

That is why the Department has established an Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program: To leverage private sector expertise in ways that will move proven technologies developed at the Department’s National Laboratories down the capital development pipeline and, ultimately, to the marketplace.

It places American entrepreneurs from leading venture capital firms in our laboratories to work with research scientists for one year to identify promising technologies and then build a business case for commercializing the innovations and moving them to market.

In November I announced we are expanding the EIR program beyond Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

It is my expectation that, by next year, we will have entrepreneurs in residence at the Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as well.

We are doing all this because we have enormous confidence in the Department’s national laboratories.

Operating in the interests of the public good, they are world class centers for science, for the development of new technology and for innovation. I do not think it is too broad a statement to state my view that, in the United States, our national laboratories are where much of the future begins.

The Department’s seventeen national laboratories, as well as facilities like this Joint Bioenergy Research Center, our five nanoscale science research centers, and others, are working to expand the compendium of human knowledge about ourselves and about the physical world we inhabit.

While they push further into the unknown realms of science, they are also directing that knowledge to deploy real solutions to our global energy, environmental, and security challenges. Simply put, our national laboratories are critical to America’s prosperity, and to that of our fellow citizens of the world.

In closing, let me say this: I know that research is never a certain path to success.

You don’t know what you’ll find behind the next door you open – or if the path you are following will ultimately bring you into the light as you had expected, or steer you in an entirely different direction. I think that’s the excitement of the discovery process.

Whether here at JBEI, or at one of our other world-class centers of research, the Department of Energy’s labs are making discoveries that will forever shape—and give me tremendous hope for—our future.

Your mission—as researchers, as scientists, as discoverers at this moment in history—is vital. It is one of America’s most urgent missions. So please keep in mind that the work you are performing is necessary to bring about a brighter, more prosperous future for this great country.

As I try to remind everyone at the Department of Energy, you are doing the people’s business and it is important that you act with a sense of urgency. Give it your all.

Thank you.

Location:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Media contact(s):
Bethany Shively, DOE (202) 586-4940