The Governor’s 2007-08 budget provides $70 million in lease revenue bonds for the Helios Energy Research Facility project, a ground breaking initiative lead by the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) that will address basic scientific problems that currently limit our ability to utilize the energy of the sun. The Helios Research Program will produce the next generation of super efficient solar energy technology that will help reduce greenhouse gases and our oil dependency. The Program’s four goals are to 1) generate clean sustainable alternatives to hydrocarbon fuels; 2) develop new energy sources; 3) improve energy conservation; and 4) reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Within the Helios Research Program, the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) is being developed as the result of a successful grant application to BP (formerly British Petroleum) by the Berkeley campus, along with its partners LBNL and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). This $500-million/10-year research program, dovetailing the University’s Helios Research Program solar energy efforts, will be dedicated to long-term research into the production of alternative fuels. The Institute will focus on converting biomass materials into fuels, converting fossil fuels to energy with less environmental damage, and maximizing oil extraction from existing wells in environmentally sensitive ways.

The Helios Energy Research Facility will support the Helios Program, including EBI, with multi-disciplinary laboratories designed specifically to obtain improvements in the efficiency of solar-to-electrical energy and solar-to-chemical energy conversion. The project will construct an approximately 88,000 assignable square foot laboratory/office building, including wet and analytical research laboratory space, research support space, and office and administrative support space. The new facility, a University of California building, will be located on the UC Berkeley campus, adjacent to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory facilities.

For more information please visit:

Energy Biosciences Institute

Securing our Energy Future