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Yes. I’m a biochemist. I, I did my thesis work working on bacteria, and then I switched
to, to plants. Um, bio- the biochemistry of plants. And I’ve worked on topics such as:
how do plants make lipids and how do plants make cellulose. So, the kinds of materials
that are actually used to make biofuels, my, I spent my career working on the basic mechanisms
of how those things are made by plants. Um, I got interested in the, in the field, I switched
to plants specifically in the 70s when I was a student because I was very concerned about
the sustainability of our modern societies. And, that was the era in which people like
Paul Ehrlich were talking about, um, the population bomb. And, so my wife and I, my wife is also
a professor at Berkeley, we decided that we needed to start, um, trying to apply science
to making at least part of our material and food needs more sustainable. And so we’ve
spent our time, uh, most of our scientific careers working on trying to improve our ability
to manipulate plants, uh, for, for both agriculture and fuel uses. And I’ve published about
230 papers in the field. Yes. The Energy Biosciences Institute at Berkeley
was founded by, uh, in response to a, um, a solicitation by the big energy company BP
for an institute that would focus on trying to understand how energy could be, or sorry,
how, how modern biology could be applied to the energy sector. And it was a very, kind
of bo- bold idea. They were looking around for technical innovation, and to make a long
story short, when I was still a professor at Stanford, I, I got involved with a person
named Steve Chu at, uh, UC Berkeley, and Steve went on to become the Secretary of Energy
of the United States. Um, and we, um, had decided that Berkeley had a lot of capability
in renewable energy, and that we should try to get this, um, this new center that BP was
offering to fund with 500 million dollars. So, we, we wrote a proposal, it was successful,
and then Berkeley recruited me away from Stanford to go and lead that center. And now the center
has about, um, all together about 500 people. It was 127 professors and, um, uh, about,
um, 380 graduate students and post docs. And we have a, it’s not just at Berkeley, it’s
at Berkeley and, uh, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign because Berkeley’s not
a very big agricultural school, and we wanted to have a, a footprint out in the agricultural
region of the country. And at that institute, we’re taking a holistic
view of bioenergy. So we, we do economics, and environmental science, and ecology, and
mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, and,
uh, law and policy, and agronomy. All wrapped up into one coherent whole, to try and understand
how to advance, uh, well, how to implement advanced, uh, biofuels. Uh, we don’t work
at all on, um, sugar cane or corn ethanol or biodiesel. Partially, mostly because those
are already relatively mature. So we’re really focused on next generation fuels.
Well there’s, I think, I, what I try and convey in my talk is that I, I think in the,
in most aspects of bioenergy there’s a lot of opportunity for innovation. There’s still,
there’s still many aspects of the process where we don’t even know what the optimal
route forward is, or too, what’s, what’s ultimately going to be, I assume, a mature
technology. So, um, I think there’s lots of interesting opportunities to get involved
with testing new ideas and trying to move them towards commercialization. My experience
has been there’s quite a bit of venture capital still available for different components,
uh, of the, of the sector. I, myself, um, have started, uh, three companies. Two of
which were in the bioenergy space. Um, and are, two, are both thriving. So I, um, I,
I think that’s a really exciting opportunity. And it’s something that requires innovation
and, you know, new i- new thinking. And so, um, I think that’s something that small,
small, ah, companies are really well qualified to do. And then eventually I expect, um, the
large energy companies will, ul, ultimately come to dominate the sort of the, the very
last step of the process. That is, you know, the large scale production, but that they
will be large consumers of, of interesting technology.
I got into the field really because, um, I was very concerned about climate change. So,
when I was a professor at Stanford, actually, Paul Ehrlich, the father of conservation biology,
was one of my colleagues in the department of biological sciences. And, ah, Stanford
also is a very strong ecology school. And my colleagues in ecology in particular, really
convinced me that the consequences of climate change were, were serious and something that
we really should try to, to bring every possible, um, technology to bear on. So, so, I started.
That’s how I became involved with Steve Chu, um, and I was, ah, for some years an
advisor to the department of energy, to the director of the department of energy as well.
And I got, in that process, I got somewhat educated about sort of, what the challenges
were, and s- gradually turned my own research towards, towards trying to adjust that challenge.
And I, I believe now that, actually, you know, it is very challenging, but long term, I do
think that we can introduce a basket of technologies that will allow us to, to evolve towards a
low carbon, um, energy system that will still allow us to maintain, uh, a good standard
of living around the world, and, um. So, I think it’s, I, actually, think it’s
really the great problem of this generation is, is how we’re going to address the energy
problem, you know, the energy and climate problem, shall we say. And, um, I see many
ways to do it. Not just in bioenergy. At Berkeley, we have an integrated energy group we call
the Berkeley, uh, energy and climate initiative that, that, in which we’ve now got, I, I
would estimate fifteen hundred to two thousand scientists working across the whole space.
So, some of us are working on biofuels. Many are working on energy efficiency. Many are
working on solar and smart grid and, um, ge- and, geological sequestration. And in general
I think that that’s the, the big opportunity now, is to, is to look at everything we can
possibly do, and, uh, bring as much creativity as we can to the sector. And, and I think,
you know, within the next 50 years, we’ll be able to gradually change the society to,
to a low carbon society. And I think it’s very important to understand it is a, you
know, a fifty year or beyond kind of initiative. That we can’t expect, uh, short term, um,
you know, changes. And in fact, I think one of our biggest challenges is that the popular
press, which is ver- you know, has, plays an important role in understanding the problem,
uh, has a very short kind of, uh, um, eh, interest, um, they, or they assume people
have a short interest. And so, they’re always looking for, you know, the short term solution.
But actually, we’re engaged in something that requires a long term commitment. And
so, I hope, my, one of my big hopes is that the popular press will also get involved in,
sort of, in keeping people’s, uh, interest and enthusiasm up as we make incremental change
towards a long term solution. Yes, ah, well, I, I think, for me it would
be biofuels. Because right now, it’s the one that we do know how to produce and it,
it, I believe it can be done sustainably, and, and it actually can be done locally and,
um, it’s how we used to produce most of our energy. You know, it wasn’t that long
ago that, uh, that actually we got pretty much all our energy from wood. And, uh, and
in fact, uh, there’s a funny saying that, um, in the United States, let’s see, at
the turn of, uh, of the, uh, at the end of the 1900s, no at the en- the end of the 1800s,
so in 1900, a third of the land in the United States roughly was used to make transportation
fuel. And, of course, in that day, it was growing oats for the horses that provided
pretty much all transportation. And so, so I actually see the bioenergy sort of initiative
as leading us back towards, uh, a sustainable, sort of a sustainable thing. And, um, so we,
we knew how to do it, and we’re gonna relearn. Of course now our energy demand has increased
very strongly, so we need to be a lot better at it than we were in 1900.
Well, we’ve sort of seen that occasionally, right? There’ve been some pretty big, um,
blackouts in which, um, you know, the power was down for substantial periods of time.
In fact, when I was a professor at Stanford, the power went down here for four days, um,
uh, due to some sort of, due to a storm that blew through and put down a lot of power lines.
And so, uh, I remember it as being a very very frustrating period of time, because I
couldn’t do my email. [Laughs] So, uh, yeah. So I think, um, obviously, it’s unpleasant
to, to live without, without, uh, power. And hopefully we won’t have too many future
instances of it. Now, I’m not all sure what else to say about that. [laughs]