The Bioenergy Initiative is bringing biology and engineering together to address the challenge of meeting our future energy needs.

Plants are the most important natural resource on the planet. Not only do they provide all the food we eat, either directly or indirectly as animal feed, but they are also an important source of building materials and biopolymers, such as rubber, as well as many important pharmaceutical products.

Now plants are increasingly being exploited as a source of renewable energy. Plants harness solar radiation by photosynthesis; because this fixes atmospheric CO2 to produce biomass, using plants as a source of energy is potentially carbon neutral. In addition, compared with other sources of renewable energy, biofuels also offer the major advantage of providing a source of liquid fuel, which is required for transport.

But biofuels have also come under criticism. So-called first-generation biofuels are produced by fermentation of starch from crops such as maize to yield ethanol, or are derived from plant oils yielding biodiesel. Although the amounts produced are small (approximately 3% of European transport fuel energy consumption comes from first-generation biofuels), the use of food crops as a source of raw materials at a time when populations are increasing in size has led to a ‘food versus fuel’ debate.

Sources of alternative biofuel feedstock that don’t compete with food production are needed. Within the past two years, scientists from several Cambridge departments have come together to form the Bioenergy Initiative to explore the potential of next-generation biofuels. These interdisciplinary collaborations are tackling the technical and environmental obstacles that must be addressed to make next-generation biofuels commercially viable. The research is focusing on two main areas: developing fuels based on non-food crops and the parts of food crops that are normally discarded as waste, and developing ways of harvesting energy from algae.