(Dulles, VA, 16 May 2006) - Edenspace Systems Corporation today announced the award of a two-year, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy ("DOE") to fund development of crops optimized for production of cellulosic ethanol. The award represents a substantial increase in past DOE funding of Edenspace's work on this innovative energy technology. Field trials of the enhanced crops are scheduled to begin next month, with traits planned to be offered for use by corn breeders in 2008 and with commercial production of the new energy crops to begin two years later.

The technology announced today is directed at reducing the production costs of cellulosic ethanol by developing and breeding crops specifically for production of energy rather than for food or fiber. Based on pioneering work sponsored by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory ("NREL"), since 2003 Edenspace has been engineering crops to enhance energy performance by incorporating genes that increase biomass and express biodegradable enzymes such as cellulases. These enzymes can "unzip" the primary constituent of plant leaves and stems, cellulose - which like the starch in corn grain consists of a long chain of sugar molecules - into simpler sugars that can be fermented into ethanol. Edenspace projects that integrating a suite of high-efficiency energy crops with existing fuel ethanol production and distribution systems can ultimately more than triple per-acre ethanol yields, reduce the cost of fuel ethanol by 20%, increase farm income, and relax pressures on farmland availability. Other expected benefits include cleaner air and productive use of agricultural byproducts such as cotton waste and rice straw that today impose significant costs on farmers and the environment. Edenspace's immediate goal under the DOE award is to decrease the cost of fuel ethanol by creating high-biomass corn varieties with cellulases and other enzymes that are active during postharvest processing. To prevent cross pollination of Energy Corntm with other plants, methods of bioconfinement will be bred into the crops. Funding from the grant partially supports development of energy crops under a cooperative agreement between Edenspace and NREL announced earlier this year, as well as development work sponsored by Edenspace at Michigan State University. The award also complements Edenspace's development of Energy Switchgrasstm with the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in September 2005.

The United States of America currently imports more than half of its petroleum, representing approximately 45% of the total trade deficit. Decreasing petroleum imports by developing renewable energy sources will stimulate the economy, increase energy security, and reduce the quantity of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. An increasingly important renewable energy source is ethanol produced from starch in corn grain. Approximately 4.3 billion gallons of fuel ethanol were produced in 2005, representing only 2% of U.S. automotive fuel use, with a national target of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.

Current technology based on fermentation of sugars from the starch in corn grain, however, offers limited opportunity to meet the world's surging demand for fuel ethanol. For example, converting the entire 255 million ton U.S. corn grain production to ethanol would meet U.S. automotive fuel demand for only two months out of the year. New technologies based on using the entire plant, not just the grain, offer an excellent pathway to reduce processing costs as well as to increasing efficient and environmentally sound use of farmland. In particular, the ability to use corn stover - the leaves and stems left in the field after the grain is harvested - for ethanol production could almost double per-acre yields of this renewable fuel using the existing infrastructure of almost 100 ethanol plants across the nation. The technology announced today seeks to solve the greatest current drawback of producing ethanol from cellulosic biomass: production cost per gallon more than twice that of ethanol from corn grain.
Headquartered in Dulles, Virginia, Edenspace Systems Corporation is a commercial leader in the engineering of plants for renewable fuels and environmental applications. The company received the Environmental Business Journal's Technology Award in 2004 and the DaimlerChrysler Environmental Excellence award in 1999. With expertise in plant science, environmental and soil science, genetics and agronomy, Edenspace is developing innovative, sustainable technologies to fulfill energy needs, improve human health, protect property values and restore the environment.