The Energy Biosciences Institute will be the nation's largest biofuels research lab. According to the Institute's website, research will focus on genetics, coal sequestration, and deriving oil from coal.

Ignacio Chapella, Associate Professor for the Environmental Sciences Policy and Management department at UC Berkeley says the research being proposed at the EBI is a Pandora's box.

"Imagine an alga, a little single cell little bug, that is able to capture energy from the sun and turn in into oil That things gets loose in the Bay. What do you get? You get a natural oil spill."

A self reproducing disaster that grows. Other critics see the deal as just one example of the oil industry trying to improve its image without addressing the problems it causes, such as climate change.

Last month Tyson foods and Conoco Phillips announced a new partnership to make biofuel. Under new IRS tax laws, SIMPLY by adding animal fat to petroleum, big oil becomes big biofuel and qualifies for large tax breaks. Eric Holtz Jiminez, executive director for Food First says big agribusiness, oil and seed companies are co-opting the development of biofuels.

"The grain companies profit. ADM is now the largest owner of ethanol plants. Ethanol plants used to primarily owned by farmer co-operatives. That's going out. Monstanto and Syngenta are going to provide the genetic material for designer corn, designer soy, designer
switch grass at some point to be processed at these plants specifically tailored to produce high ethanol, high oil content. So ethanol gets sold to oil companies and oil companies sell the mix."

Ray Newkirk, founder of Pacific Biofuel, an independent biofuel distributor in Santa Cruz, California SAYS Combined with the rain forest destruction to make way for plantations, biofuel could well contribute more to global warming than reduce harmful emissions, if in
the wrong hands.

"The biodiesel industry has the opportunity to turn the corner now, away from rain forest destruction into actually building a sustainable industry, by growing organic crops. It can be done and if we allow the petroleum industry to drive it as they are, it won't be done. They're just going to suck up the subsidies that are directed towards the biofuel industry and we will still be addicted to petroleum."

That's why Newkirk is working with local farmers to become the first certified organic producer and distributor of biofuel in the US and the world. Newkirk adds that new research in algae done at the publicly funded National Renewable Energy Lab may provide the most sustainable form of biodiesel. That research is not an area of focus for the Energy Biosciences Institute.

However Chris Sommerville, a biology professor at Stanford who is being courted to head the Energy Biosciences Institute, supports BP's partnership with UC Berkeley.

"At the end of the day it's only the business community that can really implement the kind of technologies that we're going to need to really deal with the climate change problem."

Sommerville recently divested from serving as Chair of Mendel Biotechnology to avoid a conflict of interest as Director of EBI, which is currently taking proposals for research at the new biosciences institute. Mendel Biotechnology is a private firm the pesticide and
seed giant Monsanto has partnered with to research the Miscanthus plant to make biofuel. Sommerville says the EBI will consider the social andvenvironmental effects of its research, expected to begin this summer.

Reporting for FSRN at the University of Californa, BerkeLey, I'm Christina Aanestad.