Fact Sheet: Biden-⁠Harris Administration’s Actions to Advance American Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing

Through his Investing in America Agenda, President Biden is making a once-in-a-generation investment in our clean energy future. His leadership has spurred a revolution in clean electricity, transportation, and efficiency that is cutting costs for American families and creating good-paying jobs across the country. To meet the challenges of decarbonizing the U.S. economy, President Biden is also driving progress to advance domestic biomanufacturing and biotechnology which will provide an alternative to petroleum-based production for chemicals, medicines, fuels, materials, and more. These investments support President Biden’s climate and clean energy goals, build stronger supply chains, and advance American leadership around the globe.

To advance these efforts, President Biden signed an Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy that has catalyzed action across the government to set bold goals, develop the biomanufacturing workforce, promote American leadership in biotechnology research and development, and ensure that these technologies are developed and utilized responsibly. The President’s commitment to a clean energy economy has spurred $29 billion in public and private sector biomanufacturing investments for projects across the country since the start of the Biden-Harris Administration.

Today, the White House, members of the National Bioeconomy Board, and the Departments of Energy (DOE), Defense (DOD), and Agriculture convened major biotechnology and biomanufacturing companies, nonprofits, and other stakeholders met to highlight progress to date and discuss critical upcoming milestones to support the long-term success of the nation’s bioeconomy.

This month, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a set of actions to accelerate U.S. domestic biomanufacturing capacity and highlighting progress in the two years since the President signed the Executive Order, including:

• DOE’s Loan Programs Office announced a $213.6 million conditional loan guarantee to Solugen Inc’s Bioforge Marshall facility in Marshall, Minnesota. This commitment is the largest single federal investment in bioindustial manufacturing since President Biden signed Executive Order 14081.The new facility, Bioforge Marshall, will house three modular trains manufacturing various organic acids for use in the concrete, cleaning, agricultural, and energy industries​—cutting harmful emissions from hard-to-decarbonize sectors while helping deliver healthier communities across the nation. As part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to create good-paying, high-quality job opportunities for American workers, this project will create up to 100 jobs during construction and 56 highly skilled full-time manufacturing jobs once fully operational. 

• The Department of Agriculture is making available recommendations for revisions to the North American Industry Classification System and North American Product Classification System codes for the bioeconomy. These classifications provide a systematic organization of both industries (NAICS) and products (NAPCS) and are currently lacking for the bioeconomy. NAICS industries are defined by similarities in production processes. NAPCS products are defined based on use. The recommendations for revisions to the NAICS and NAPCS are guided by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology’s Bioeconomy Lexicon, and a study of the feasibility of measuring the bioeconomy by the Bureau of Economic. These revisions will lay the foundation to organize, sustain, and accelerate the growth of the U.S. bioeconomy through data-driven decision-making.

• The Department of Agriculture is also releasing a request for information from the public as it explores options for reducing the regulatory burden for modified microbes. Engineered organisms have the potential to improve agricultural productivity and address sustainability and climate goals. The information USDA hopes to receive will inform how to ensure proportionate oversight that will allow for both safety and commercialization of beneficial products.

• The National Security Council is announcing the newly formed Biopharma Coalition (Bio-5) to support secure biopharmaceutical supply chains, in partnership with the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response. The United States, EU, India, Japan, and the Republic of Korea will work together to strengthen biopharmaceutical supply chain resilience. The Bio-5, which initially met in a track 1.5 format alongside industry representatives from each entity, will focus on building resilient supply chains for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) currently sourced primarily from the People’s Republic of China. The five countries will seek opportunities for their governments and the private sector to deepen coordination on policy, regulations, R&D capabilities, and other tools to enhance the resilience of this vital sector.

These announcements build upon more than $3.5 billion in investments and a wide range of actions the Biden-Harris Administration has already taken to increase U.S. biomanufacturing capacity:

• The Administration established the National Bioeconomy Board to lead actions to achieve a sustainable, safe, and secure American bioeconomy.

• The Department of Defense, which released its Biomanufacturing Strategy in March 2023, announced an over $1 billion investment in domestic biomanufacturing to strengthen defense supply chains. These efforts will accelerate the bio-materials development pipeline with the Air Force, Army, and Navy laboratories; establish a commercial investment program that seeks to industrialize maturing biomaterials; and build supply chain resilience for the Department. This investment prioritizes applications where technologies have both military and commercial applications covering the primary focus areas of: Food, Fuel, Fitness, Fabrication, and Firepower.

• DOE’s Office of Science supported $264 million for 29 projects to address the scientific challenges underlying DOE’s Energy Earthshots™ Initiative to advance clean energy technologies within the decade and drive broader innovation for a sustainable bioeconomy.  The funding will support 11 new Energy Earthshot Research Centers led by DOE National Laboratories and 18 university research teams addressing the Energy Earthshots™ that are focused on six different areas, including biologically-driven solutions in carbon-neutral energy, industrial decarbonization, and carbon storage.

• DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) is supporting $151 million to scale promising technologies that convert biomass to biofuels and bioproducts, accelerating the growing Bioeconomy. The selected projects include demonstration-scale biomanufacturing facilities that will ramp up to produce millions of gallons of low-carbon fuel annually. By investing in these technologies, the projects will create good-paying jobs in rural and underserved communities in nine states and enhance education and training opportunities regionally to build the bioenergy workforce.

• DOE’s Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Office (FECM) and BETO have also provided $80M to support research, and field trials for biomass and waste feedstocks including CO2 gases, micro- and macro algae and energy crops to fuel the bioeconomy and over $40M to support research in the development of industrially relevant biocatalysts/microorganisms to make more affordable biofuels and bioproducts.

• DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstration (OCED) announced up to $200 million in Federal Cost Share for the Sustainable Ethylene from CO2 Utilization with Renewable Energy (SECURE) project, led by T.EN Stone & Webster Process Technology, Inc. in partnership with LanzaTech, with plans to demonstrate an integrated process to utilize captured carbon dioxide from ethylene production—an important building block for many products—by applying a biotech-based processand green hydrogen to create clean ethanol and ethylene.

• The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a $30 million investment in the NSF Science and Technology Center for Quantitative Cell Biology. Led by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Harvard Medical School, and the J. Craig Venter Institute, this center brings together an interdisciplinary group of experts to develop whole cell models—a full quantitative description of the physical and chemical processes that define the state of a cell. Whole cell models can be used to predict and design new bioengineered systems or compare the function of healthy cells to diseased cells, leading to a better understanding of what goes wrong in diseased cells.

• NSF, in partnership with the Simons Foundation, announced a $50 million investment in an institute tasked with bringing together experts in mathematics and biology to uncover the fundamental principles governing life through theories, data-informed mathematical models, and computational, statistical, and AI tools, critical fundamental research that will fuel innovations across all sectors of the bioeconomy. The National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology (NITMB), led by Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, will create a nationwide collaborative research community that will target promising and challenging areas of exploration that help address some of societies greatest challenges, including those with impacts on the bioeconomy like sustainable agriculture, preventing pandemics, and mitigating the effects of climate change. The NITMB will also train the next generation of researchers to use to power of mathematics and biology to advances in areas as diverse as the environment, biomedicine, and technology development.

• NSF awarded a first in its kind National Synthesis Center for Emergence in Molecular and Cellular Sciences, a center focused on data synthesis, use and reuse in the molecular and cellular biotechnology space. The $20 million center, led by Pennsylvania State University, with partners including the University of Arizona, Claflin University, Alcorn State University, and Fayetteville State University, will tackle many of the data infrastructure and data workforce issues that are critical to enabling a robust U.S. bioeconomy.

• NSF has committed to increasing U.S. investment in bioeconomy-related infrastructure, including biofoundries and centers, and is completing its first competition for its new bioFoundries to Enable Access to Infrastructure and Resources for Advancing Modern Biology and Biotechnology program. With up to $75 million in funds committed towards the first BioFoundries, NSF is investing in and democratizing access to critical infrastructure that will advance all sectors of the bioeconomy, spur tool development, enable user-initiated research provide user facilities, and train and grow the biotechnology workforce across the U.S.  In addition, with the latest Global Centers competition underway, on Use Inspired Research Addressing Global Challenges through the Bioeconomy, with topics that include biofoundries, and partners from Canada, Finland, Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom, NSF is poised to commit an additional $25 million, a commitment that will be amplified by the international partners.

• USDA’s Rural Development program has invested more than $500 million in several different loan and grant programs to impact the domestic bioeconomy. These programs invested in areas such as advanced biofuels, biofuel infrastructure, renewable fertilizer production, and biogas and biomass projects.  In addition, the RD Biopreferred catalog of biobased products added 1,517 net new products and 559 net new companies offering those products. 
• USDA has invested over $500 million in new research and development to advance the nation’s bioeconomy since the President’s Executive Order. Pioneering work by USDA scientists created the foundation for the first commercial harvests of new oilseed crops—domesticated pennycress and carinata—which provide new sources of fuel and feed without requiring additional cropland. Advancements in biomanufacturing by USDA have resulted in adhesives for grocery PLU stickers that can be composted, bio-asphalts that generate fewer emissions, and biobased antioxidants for stabilization of natural rubber in tires. USDA’s research strives to harness the power of biotechnology and biomanufacturing to expand opportunities for U.S. agricultural producers while also tackling some of our greatest challenges like climate change, nutrition insecurity, environmental justice, emerging diseases and pests, and growing competition overseas.
• The USDA Forest Service has made catalytic investments in the wood-based bioeconomy to support land management, wildfire risk reduction, climate adaptation, and local economies. These projects support the critical connection between healthy and resilient federal, state, tribal and private forests and the wood products economy. Through USDA’s Forest Service, the Biden-Harris Administration has funded 482 projects totaling nearly $190 million in investments to support the wood-based bioeconomy, including supporting innovation, market development and new and expanded manufacturing capacity.

• The State Department has initiated additional extensive international engagement to assess opportunities for global cooperation on the bioeconomy, coordinated by the Office of the Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology. This work complements ongoing bilateral and multilateral efforts led by the Bureaus of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, Economic and Business Affairs, and others. 
• NSF and the Indian Department of Biotechnology signed an implementation arrangement to enable collaborative biotechnology and biomanufacturing research partnerships between engineers and scientists from the United States and India.

• President Biden launched the Global Biofuels Alliance at the 2023 G20 Leader’s Summit to make progress in our shared commitment to deploy cleaner, greener fuels around the world that help meet our decarbonization goals. This alliance between the United States, Argentina, Brazil, India, Italy, Mauritius, and the United Arab Emirates will focus on raising awareness on the benefits of biofuels, policy lessons learned, existing standards and certification; and an emphasis on sustainability, security of supply and affordability principles while avoiding overlap with existing biofuels initiatives.

These critical achievements highlight the Biden-Harris Administration’s government-wide approach to advancing the biotechnology and biomanufacturing towards innovative solutions in health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security.

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