The Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) yesterday announced $1.15 million in awards for two research new programs and two exploratory research efforts that are aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Spanning the research areas of biomass, advanced coal utilization and integrated assessment of biofuels, these projects bring the total number of GCEP-funded programs to 32, with a total of $46.6 million spent since the project started in December 2002.

The first program, “Microbial Synthesis of Biodiesel,” hopes to genetically engineer a specific bacterium to improve biodiesel production. Led by Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Prof. Chaitan Khosla, the project could produce groundbreaking ways to make new types of liquid fuels from biomass.

The second research program, “Technology Potential of Biofuels: Feasibility Assessment,” aims develop a way to produce quantitative estimates of the total biomass resource that is sustainably available and the necessary costs to produce this biomass for energy. The project is headed by Biological Sciences Prof. Christopher Field and Rosamond Lee Naylor, the Julie Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford.

The other two exploratory project efforts will offer an opportunity for researchers outside of Stanford to collaborate on evaluating the potential of a novel coal-energy-conversion research concept. Both under the title “Integration of Coal Energy Conversion with Aquifer-Based Carbon Sequestration,” these activities are spearheaded by Chemical Engineering Associate Prof. Larry Baxter and Mechanical Engineering Associate Prof. Dale Tree. If successful, these projects could find a way to decrease harmful global warming side effects of coal-based power generation.

“These new research activities are based on excellent science and step-out ideas,” said GCEP Director Franklin Orr Jr. in a press release.

The GCEP, sponsored by corporate giants like ExxonMobil, GE, Schlumberger and Toyota, plans to continue to invest $225 million across the span of a decade to encourage environment-friendly projects.