I got this email 27 minutes ago from Robert Birgeneau, our Chancellor:

Colleagues, students, and friends:

I am proud and excited to tell you that a partnership led by UC Berkeley has been selected to receive an unprecedented $500 million from global energy firm BP to lead the way in research to develop new, clean, renewable sources of energy. With this remarkable support, the work Berkeley will undertake will be transformative for our nation and, indeed, our planet.

The campus will partner with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in this 10-year effort, which was announced this morning at a campus press conference by Robert A. Malone, chairman and president of BP America Inc., along with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

This new research effort -- the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) -- will focus initially on biotechnology to produce biofuels, that is, transportation fuels that are made from plants. Berkeley and its partners will bring the most creative science, innovative technologies, and astute understanding of social sciences to bear to develop viable solutions to global energy challenges, among the most fundamental problems facing us today.

[...]

First thought: holy crap that's a lot of money (second thought: wow, BP is actually putting its money where its mouth is). I think this is fantastic news, not only for Berkeley, but also for energy research in general. For more information about this rather unprecedented research partnership, see here and here.

UPDATE: This article in the SF Chronicle more succinctly lays out what this all means.