The nation’s first public advanced biofuel testing center will be built at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in San Francisco in order to help expedite the commercialization of next-generation biofuels.

Funded by an $18 million U.S. DOE Recovery Act grant, the Advanced Biofuels Process Development Unit will provide industry-scale test beds for innovative technologies, and will be available for public use. The first-of-its-kind facility is scheduled to be fully operational by early 2011, and multiple locations in the San Francisco East Bay region are being considered for possible locations.