Non-food crops like switchgrass are a promising source of plant-based fuels like ethanol and isobutanol, which can be produced by microbes. But switchgrass grown during droughts has high levels of chemicals that limit how much sugar these microbes can convert to alcohol. This experiment shows that breaking down switchgrass with ammonia, water, and enzymes and then lowering the acidity of the resulting hydrolysate solution both improve fermentation and biofuel production from switchgrass, especially when grown in drought conditions.

Computer-assisted technology for recycling plastics, a technique for producing a valuable chemical from agricultural waste, and genetic mutations that can turn trees into carbon-sucking chemical factories are among the innovations by Wisconsin Energy Institute investigators that address critical

Abundant but chemically complex, lignin has long been one of the biggest challenges in the quest to produce economically viable plant-based fuels. 

Brian Fox, the Marvin J. Johnson Professor in Fermentation Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, tinkers with the way living things use chemistry to turn their own blueprints, DNA, into the processes that make a healthy organism go.

A new website for Wisconet, how budget and staff cuts threaten hurricane forecasts, impacts of the House's budget bill, plus prospects for new gas and nuclear generation.

Wisconsin's K-12 Energy Education Program (KEEP) has named Wisconsin Energy Institute's Allison Bender as 2025 Energy Educator of the Year.

Microbes are key to turning plants into liquid fuels: Yeasts and bacteria eat plant sugars like glucose and turn them into alcohols, a process known as fermentation.