Bioeconomy — it can't be looked up in the dictionary.
And while Gov. Jennifer Granholm and MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon use the buzzword to describe the future of Michigan's jobs using alternative energy and advanced manufacturing, area researchers struggle to define it.
As the world oil supply becomes increasingly scarce and expensive, MSU scientists have begun rethinking the way products, such as fuel, are made and how they can be replaced. The goal is to use MSU's strength in agricultural research to move Michigan away from a traditional manufacturing economy to a new mix of high-tech jobs and agriculture — a bioeconomy.
Redefining the farm
The key for turning MSU's research into an economic force in Michigan is the agricultural extension program. With it, Michigan farmers and researchers could become important partners in replacing petroleum with new types of cash crops.
"It starts here in agriculture, but it's centered toward real issues," said Steve Pueppke, director of the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station and assistant vice president for research and graduate studies.
Extension stations are the tape that connect farms around the state to MSU scientists who want to try new innovations in agriculture. There are offices in almost all of Michigan's 83 counties.
"We like to talk about our function being transformative," said Tom Coon, director of MSU Extension. "If someone has an idea about a biorefinery they want to get started, we try to get them to take that idea and realize it."
Pueppke was recently named director for MSU's newly created Office of Bio-based Technologies. His challenge is to coordinate and collect MSU agricultural research and brainstorm ways to turn it into marketable products.
"Think of all the crops we make; for hundreds of years we've farmed them for food products," Pueppke said. Now researchers are discovering new ways to cheaply convert corn into ethanol for fuel, he said.
Most of the ethanol produced in the United States today is derived from corn starch, because starch contains the sugars needed to create the fuel. The challenge for scientists is to figure out ways to make ethanol from the remaining parts of the plant — the biomass that includes parts such as the stalk — because the kernels are a valuable source of many food products.
But the traditional methods of converting the remaining plant stalk into ethanol are expensive and time intensive.
Crop and Soil Science Professor Mariam Sticklen has another solution — build better crops.
"The enzymes that break down the plant into sugars already exist in the soil," Sticklen said. "We don't play God. Nature has created them — they're safe."
What nature hasn't done, however, is grow the enzymes inside the crops themselves — this is Sticklen's solution.
In her MSU lab, Sticklen has figured out a way to introduce the needed enzymes into the biomass of the corn plants. Her research allows corn to be harvested for ethanol production, but without the time-consuming process to break it down.
Research didn't sell the product, however. The next step was finding someone to turn the knowledge into a viable business.
Enter Edenspace Systems Corp., a Virginia-based company that has contracted two of Sticklen's patented plant modification techniques and expressed interest in others. Sticklen said the company wants to build a new biorefinery in Michigan using her technology. It could get twice the production value out of a crop using her methods, she said.
Research, such as Sticklen's, is key to developing the bioeconomy. It is agriculture with a high-tech business spin.
"In the future, the children of farmers will stay on and do farming," Sticklen said. "They could stay because the income is going to be much better than most jobs."
Funding the idea
The bioeconomy could not be driven on ethanol alone, however, and other faculty at MSU have found ways to turn their research into business opportunities.
Dennis Miller, a chemical engineering and materials science professor, is working to break down basic plant chemicals and use them as replacements for petroleum chemicals used today in products such as plastics and cosmetics. Last week, Miller was one of 66 MSU researchers who submitted proposals to the 21st Century Jobs Fund in hopes of receiving funding to support research.
The fund is a $100 million contest sponsored by the Michigan Legislature that gives money to researchers and entrepreneurs who can show their ideas could become viable businesses.
Miller said his research could be commercialized in many ways.
"In the big term, there are literally hundreds of compounds you can make," he said. "From fuels like ethanol and biodiesel, to all the plastics you use. Anywhere we use petroleum, we could use biomass."
Miller said the time is ripe for the country to invest in these alternative manufacturing chemicals.
"We are at a breaking point," Miller said. "First, as petroleum gets more expensive, the research we are doing is making biomass conversion cheaper. Right now the biomass industry is where the petroleum industry was 75 years ago — we're just getting ramped up."
Ramani Narayan, a chemical and biochemical engineering professor, agrees Michigan needs to move toward new manufacturing possibilities in biochemicals.
"Manufacturing jobs are going, and you can't get them back," Narayan said. "Now these jobs are more cheaply done in China and India."
Narayan knows something about creating jobs in Michigan with science. His research has been utilized in a number of start-up companies including KTM Industries Inc., located in Lansing. The company uses techniques developed by Narayan to create foam packaging material and children's toys from corn starch.
Narayan and Miller are also involved in an effort to bring a biodiesel refinery and research facility to campus. The plant would be a fully commercial enterprise, Narayan said, but would offer the university a chance to do advanced research in a real-world environment, while teaching students about the possibilities of alternative fuels. The plant would also produce biodiesel fuel for the university's needs.
Turning MSU research into Michigan jobs is exactly why the 21st Century Jobs Fund was designed. It is also why some state political leaders have embraced the bioeconomy, believing a diversified economy could be the jolt Michigan needs to create jobs.
Growing business
Ask most research scientists what their mission is and they'll tell you gaining knowledge — not job creation. So where do professors get the support they need to go from the laboratory to business offices? That comes from area organizations such as MBI International, a business incubator, which helps research turn into competitive businesses by offering office, laboratory and manufacturing space, as well as advice to new entrepreneurs.
"It's like living with your parents," said Mark Stowers, the institute's president and chief executive officer. "You might have to pay $25 to live there, but mom still cooks you dinner every night."
In Stowers' office at the Lansing-based MBI, there are both biotechnology-inspired magazines and a large poster of Albert Einstein touting the importance of creativity.
Because if you aren't creative, you don't work at MBI, Stowers said.
"You have to be able to solve problems and look at opportunity creatively," he said. "It's like being an architect and a builder at the same time."
Stowers said MBI is at full capacity with four private companies and three MSU groups using the research space for agricultural — or bio-based — technology. Within the past four years, outside companies have begun to seek MBI's help; two years ago, the first MSU researchers turned to MBI.
Not that biotechnology is anything new. MBI was founded in 1981 with the intention of working with advanced biotechnology research.
Just last week, a shipment of a new rocket propellant for the U.S. Navy was being created at MBI. The new chemical for the propellant was made using farm products, such as sugar cane, to grow the product until it had created about 40 gallons of the chemical — which might sell for about $20-30 a kilogram.
Researchers are also trying to develop a chemical that would self-clean car windshields and another to clean impurities out of water when poured into military canteens.
MBI is also coordinating the recently developed Lansing Regional SmartZone. The zones are part of a campaign by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. to create clusters of advanced technology businesses near universities.
"It's a lightning rod for new business development," Stowers said about the SmartZone. "If people want to start new businesses, they have one place they can call. If it's in our expertise, we'll take them and if not, we'll connect them with the right people."
Job creation
The creation of the SmartZone has been a long time coming, said East Lansing Community and Economic Development Administrator Tim Dempsey.
In 2000, when East Lansing and Lansing first had the chance to create a zone, there was a lack of trust and coordination between the cities. They missed the MEDC's deadlines and were left out of the initiative.
They weren't going to let it happen again, Dempsey said.
"There was a realization that we were falling behind the curve," he said.
Members of the Lansing Regional SmartZone, developed in January, are working to attract software, advanced manufacturing and biotechnology businesses in designated SmartZone regions that could bring a larger tax base, more jobs and younger and better-trained employees, said Karl Dorshimer, project coordinator for the Economic Development Corp. in Lansing. Tax money collected from these new businesses could be poured into more business incubation and local infrastructure such as roads.
"We're trying to replace manufacturing jobs and we're trying to replace them with high-tech jobs," Dorshimer said. "I don't see us replacing 10,000 (General Motors Corp.) jobs overnight, but we're finding ways to slowly turn our economy around."
Hurdles to climb
When Kris Berglund thinks of the bioeconomy, he knows its potential, but he's also aware of its setbacks.
Berglund is a professor in chemical engineering and materials science. He is also the co-founder and chief science officer of the MSU spin-off company Diversified Natural Products, or DNP, which creates gourmet foods and food supplements, as well as chemicals and fuels from renewable resources.
"We're a good example where you take a raw material, perform a series of complex changes and you create something of a higher value," Berglund said. "At least half of our intellectual property has come from MSU."
His company was a success, but he fears many others won't be able to find the funding for $80 million biorefineries, even with money from the 21st Century Jobs Fund and the SmartZone initiative.
"The SmartZone is great and it might help accelerate something," Berglund said. "But at the end of the day, if there is not money, we've accelerated ourselves into a brick wall."
DNP got around the funding hurdle by leaving the United States.
Knowing genetically modified chemicals had potential if the company could get them mass produced, Berglund and other company leaders searched for businesses that owned large scale biorefineries that could be used to test the chemicals. U.S. companies were unwilling to invest in the project, but a plant in France was willing to take the chance.
The joint venture was so successful, it was marked by a visit from French President Jacques Chirac and later prompted the company to build additional space to continue producing the chemical, which is now being used to produce foods, biodegradable solvents, runway de-icers, engine coolants and some plastics.
Even when DNP proved its international competitiveness, the company had trouble convincing U.S. banks to loan $1 million in operating costs for a new $11 million gourmet mushroom factory in Scottville, Mich. — a common problem for science-based businesses.
"If you're not building a 7-Eleven or a strip mall, lenders won't even look at you," Berglund said.
And even if Michigan begins to tackle this problem now, it's starting behind the pack, Berglund said. Several states are already working heavily in biotechnology, he said.
"We have one of these plants in Michigan," he said. "Do you know how many ethanol plants will be built in Iowa by the end of the year? Twenty-nine.
"We've got our work cut out for us as a state."
