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Bioenergy policies based strictly on economic or energy considerations that lack attention to biodiversity impacts will likely have serious consequences for the conservation of wild bees and their pollination services, according to a newly published scientific journal paper.

Three Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) researchers are recipients of project funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture’s Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy program, which recently awarded $12.6 million to scientific projects aimed at accelerating the use of plant tissue in bioenergy and biofuels.

CONTACT: Shannon Stahl, 608-265-6288, stahl@chem.wisc.edu

In an article entitled “Cellulose Breakdown: Investigations into making liquid fuel from plant biomass,” GLBRC education and outreach director, John Greenler, coordinator Leith Nye, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s outreach and education manager, Travis Tangen, describe a lab designed to

Traveling across the American Midwest, where corn is both a major commodity and a prominent feature of the rural landscape, it’s easy to take the corn plant for granted.

iofuels can be managed either sustainably or unsustainably. In contrast, it is difficult to imagine how fossil energy systems can ever achieve desirable environmental outcomes.

The week of June 16 marked the annual Bioenergy Institute for Educators program at the Wisconsin Energy Institute. Hosted by the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center’s (GLBRC) education and outreach staff, the Institute welcomed educators to learn about the latest bioenergy breakthroughs and how to bring contemporary energy content into their classrooms.

n a lightly overcast morning in early June, Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) and UW-Madison entomologist Claudio Gratton’s team of researchers and technicians file into a passenger van and head out for another day of gathering insects from the twenty native grassland sites that make up the team’s outdoor summer laboratory.

A recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has drawn renewed attention to the dire consequences of ongoing human-made climate change. Without a substantial reduction of global carbon emissions, the group warns, the effect of climate change to human and natural communities will inevitably, and catastrophically, worsen.

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