BP today announced it has selected the University of California Berkeley and its partners the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to join in a $500 million research program that will explore how bioscience can be used to increase energy production and reduce the impact of energy consumption on the environment.

With the crisis in oil and natural gas prices, the continued violence in the Middle East, and the environmental concerns brought front and center by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, alternative fuels have managed to become a topic of conversation in the mainstream media. Unfortunately, not all proposals make sense environmentally. The energy crisis has given the nuclear industry a major …