The Biofuels Center of North Carolina, the U.S.'s first comprehensive agency tasked with creating a statewide biofuels sector, is based on the 426-acre Biofuels Campus.

The campus is a former USDA tobacco research facility that was deeded over to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, or NCDA. The Biofuels Center, a state-funded non-profit, partners with the NCDA on the use of the acreage on the campus for field trials of energy crops. The campus is central to the statewide North Carolina Grows Biofuels? project to gather agronomic data on a range of energy crops and fast-growth trees at research stations from the mountains to the coast.

Although a limited amount of tobacco research still takes place on the Biofuels campus, greater and greater amounts of acreage are being set aside for growing and researching new energy crops and analyzing best practices for growing these crops.

In the last quarter of 2009, a biodiesel pilot plant will be built on campus to produce biodiesel from crops grown for agronomic data as well as to convert the approximately 15,000 gallons of waste vegetable oil produced each year at the NCDA-run State Fair. The production facility will also be used to assist North Carolina biodiesel companies conduct research on new feedstocks, technologies and optimizations.

The campus enables the Biofuels Center to connect field trials?, laboratory and greenhouse space with economic models, education, public outreach, and pilot scale production, and have all of this within a short walking distance of each other.

The campus and center are 45 minutes north of Raleigh-Durham Airport, and the Research Triangle Park?.