Energy jolt: UW-Madison to get funding for bioenergy center

The U.S. Department of Energy announced Monday the University of Wisconsin-Madison will receive a new, five-year round of funding for its energy research center that has produced 160 patents and spawned five start-up companies in its 10-year history.

But the exact level of federal funding remains unclear and the announcement comes at a time of deep budget cuts at the Energy Department under President Donald Trump's administration. 

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In a statement, the Energy Department said that it was funding four research centers, including the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at UW-Madison, for a total of $40 million in the federal government's 2018 fiscal year.

In past funding rounds, the research center has received about $25 million annually. The initial funding in 2007 totaled $125 million.

Tim Donohue, director of the center, said he has not received word on what the Energy Department has earmarked for Wisconsin's work, which centers on ways to replace petroleum in fuels and chemicals with renewable, plant-based sources.

"They didn't give us a number," said Donohue, adding that Congress' work on the budget is far from complete.  

He noted that a House Appropriations Committee last week kept funding for science research for energy and water unchanged. 

In his budget, Trump cut funding for energy research by 18%. Meanwhile, uncertainty has swirled around the agency in an administration that says it will champion domestic fuel production and has questioned mainstream views of climate scientists on the role humans play in a warming planet.

To date, the center has received $267 million from the Energy Department, which includes collaboration with Michigan State University. The money represents the largest federal grant ever awarded to UW-Madison. 

In 2015, Gov. Scott Walker cut funding for the Wisconsin Energy Institute at the university. That prompted the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which handles all of the center's patent work, to provide $3.5 million in December 2015 as a source of needed matching funds for the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.

"I don't want to ignore the financial piece of this, but this is a huge win for the University of Wisconsin," Donohue said.

Partners from the private sector include Glendale-based Johnson Controls Inc. and Mid-West Energy Research Consortium, a public-private collaborative in Milwaukee. 

In the next phase of funding, Donohue said that UW and Michigan State researchers will work on energy and chemical production from sources such as poplar trees, switchgrass and sorghum for an array of uses.

But in a shift, research will center on growing crops on marginal lands not used for farming. Researchers have identified three dozen regions across the Midwest that could potentially be sites of plant-to-bioenergy production facilities, according to Donohue.