Algae Energy Orgy
Scum artists: The false promise of algae-fuel companies.
When Adam Freeman graduated last December from Kennesaw State University in Georgia with a degree in biochemistry, he wanted to work in only one field: pond scum. Freeman had read that entrepreneurs were squeezing out fuel from the green muck known as algae, and he wanted to be one of them. So he set out on an algae road trip. With a list of more than 40 companies to visit, he drove from his hometown of Roswell, Georgia, to Vancouver, British Columbia, and back—sleeping on couches and knocking on companies' doors. But after four months and 18,000 miles, he realized that the industry wasn't what it purported to be. No one actually seemed to be producing oil. Most companies were simply growing scum without analyzing it. Some were bizarrely secretive. "I thought there'd be established companies where I could get a job, but there weren't," he says.
Freeman saw firsthand the algae industry's slimy secret: Some companies have promised impossible amounts of oil based on speculation, raising millions from unwitting investors. "We can overtake petroleum by 2030!" one algae executive proclaimed at a meeting in June. Biofuel experts say that with the technology expected in the next three to five years, an acre of algae can theoretically yield as much as 5,000 gallons of oil annually—enough to fuel about 10 cars for a year. Sounds impressive, especially compared with other biofuels; the current yield for corn ethanol is about 400 gallons per acre. Yet ethanol sells for about $2 a gallon, while making algal oil is still so prohibitively expensive that the algae companies have produced only a few dozen gallons of it.
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Weird Weather Watch: Killer Algae Bloom
Sea lions (pictured) and elephant seals are sick and dying off the coast of California due to a record algae bloom. Algae produces domoic acid, which is toxic to sea mammals in large doses. "In over 22 years of marine mammal rescues, I've never seen such distress of marine mammals," said Peter Wallerstein of the Whale Rescue Team, a private marine mammal rescue group....
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Virgin Airlines: Powered by Pond Scum?
Virgin founder Richard Branson has set out to create a viable biofuel. Will his ecofriendly venture take off?
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Speculating on Oil
The Obama administration plans to take a more proactive position toward speculation in the oil market.
Not one algae company has a commercial-scale system. In fact, most haven't moved out of the lab. Their big claims, explains Stephen Mayfield, a biologist at the Scripps Research Institute, are extrapolated from their best lab results. But the numbers aren't so easy to fudge in other biofuel industries. Startups working on cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, for instance, must prove they can outperform the corn ethanol industry.
A concerted effort to study algal fuels started in 1978 at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado. The $25 million program, which laid the groundwork for much of the current research, shut down in 1996, in part because algal oil couldn't compete with the low cost of crude. But entrepreneurs pounced when fuel prices jumped in 2006. Today there are an estimated 200 algae companies worldwide.
Pond scum attracts dilettantes in part because the process of turning it into fuel seems so straightforward. When algae are deprived of nutrients, they stop growing and put their energy into storage, often in the form of natural oils called lipids. These oils can be refined into just about any kind of fuel, such as biodiesel or crudelike oil that can be made into gasoline. Algae have the potential to produce 10 times more oil per acre than common biofuel crops such as palms and soybeans. Production can be done in open ponds or enclosed, transparent bioreactors; on swampy land and in salt water; and without competing with food crops. Algae can even suck carbon dioxide from industrial emissions pumped directly into their ponds, while plants have to absorb it from the air.
But with simple technology come simple limits. Promises from companies that say they can surpass 10,000 gallons an acre are "total baloney," says Ron Pate, a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories. Only a handful of algae companies have realistic business plans or proprietary technology, says Jürgen Polle, an algae specialist at Brooklyn College. The bulk of startups "don't have a clue about algae" but are hyping their technologies anyway, he says. Polle estimates that about 10 percent are knowingly making promises they can't keep.
Pitching an algae company on inflated numbers is surprisingly easy. Here's how it's done: Present your scaled-up yields at meetings filled with VC investors hungry for the next renewable fuel. For flair, paste Photoshopped images of giant ponds of algae onto your presentations and your website. Then, when people ask to see your facility, tell them it's top secret. Pate at Sandia Laboratories says he keeps "getting the runaround" from companies when he tries to validate their claims. Freeman says OriginOil execs told him that their Los Angeles facility was off-limits to visitors.
Concerns about the hype haven't discouraged major investors. In July, petroleum giant ExxonMobil, once famous for scoffing at biofuels like ethanol, announced it would invest $600 million in algae technology. The industry is also about to get a federal windfall: The Department of Energy plans to devote $50 million of its stimulus funding to an "algal biofuels consortium" aimed at bringing together public sector labs like Sandia with private companies. As much as another $200 million, subject to congressional appropriations, will be divided among 5 to 12 groups with proposals for biorefinery projects. Algae companies are eligible to apply. Gene Petersen, a top DOE biomass researcher, is aware of the industry's murky claims, but his fellow researcher Valerie Sarisky-Reed sees potential "so great it can't be ignored."
Some of the most outrageous claims have come from Valcent Products, whose executives have said they can produce 100,000 gallons of oil per acre per year. Meanwhile, SunEco Energy in Chino, California, claims it will be able to produce more than 33,000 gallons per acre per year based on a pilot operation with the volume of a large backyard swimming pool. It also claims that it will make fuel for close to $20 a barrel. But Pate estimates the actual cost of algae fuel at $420 to $840 a barrel. Even if that figure decreased by half in five years, as some predict, it would still cost five times as much as crude did at its peak in 2008.
Some overconfident companies have already crashed. When the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based GreenFuel Technologies was founded in 2001, its claims were so overblown that they "became a joke," says Mayfield. The company insisted it could produce oil at the equivalent of more than 44,000 gallons per acre per year. Venture capitalists ponied up more than $33 million between 2005 and 2008, a sizable amount for an energy startup of its size.
GreenFuel's pilot project proved twice as expensive as projected, and the company folded in May. "They had no technology—nothing except PR for outrageous claims repeated often enough to sound believable to some poor souls who bought into their fibs," says John Benemann, a former researcher at the University of California-Berkeley who now works as an algae consultant. Mark Quinn, a British entrepreneur who wanted to test his algae species in GreenFuel's bioreactor, paid the company $300,000 in licensing fees.
Whether the algae charlatans will be exposed before the DOE sinks taxpayers' money into their companies is another question. Curtis Rich, a renewable energy attorney, says he believes the DOE's review teams will be "able to determine those projects based on press releases and those based on sound research." But Benemann is not so sure. The week GreenFuel folded, the DOE awarded an Arizona utility $70.6 million to scale up the firm's technology.
As for Freeman, he has concluded that instead of joining up with an existing algae company, he's better off starting his own. The way he sees it, there isn't a lot of real competition out there.
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Commercial response
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check us out and we will let you visit and we will let you help us and we will not make outrageous claims.
Algae has potential beyond just oil production
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Growing algae strictly for fuel production is not feasible, but when coupled with other benefits it can become practical. There are many instances where, due to water pollution, uncontrolled algal blooms are devastating waterways. Deliberate cultivation can utilize the nutrient loads in waste water and agricultural run off which would reduce our impact on the environment while providing some fuel and other beneficial products.
Any technology that can contribute to our society’s sustainability should be fully explored. There should be funding available research into more efficient systems and multiple benefit applications. There are companies, such as mine, that are trying to be pragmatic in their approach to algal culture.
Algae Energy Orgy - comment.
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2nd attempt to post.
Congratulations to Emily Waltz. This is great article in that it is one of the few that deals with the lack of any true economic results in the current state of the art of algae oil biofuel costs. It's one of just a handful or articles that I have found and read over the last three years that had any intellectual, or journalistic integrity on the subject. Like Adam Freeman we have been researching algae oil biofuel development, but for more than three years - and with the added advantage of a staff that has been producing algae commercially for 30+ years. Adam's and the author's observations are in total agreement with ours. Algae may have potential as a fuel source, but the way most developers are going about developing that potential - not only defies good science, but basic economics - both fiscal and physical. Most algae developers aren't even aware that the processes they are developing require more energy than the algae can possibly produce. They are in stark violation of the Laws of Thermodynamics. Consequently, their only economic hope is to make their money off naive investors. Algae fuel and alternative energy in general could benefit from hiring a few more economist and few less PR types.
Durwood M. Dugger, Pres.
BCI, Inc.
www.biocepts.com
The Oil Prize
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I've been calling the oil from algae guys on their con for years now and been challenging them to support a very simple idea: The Oil Prize
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-n0mo9RTVc
Basically, it starts with a fund dedicated to purchasing vegan certified omega-3 (DHA and/or EPA) since these are primarily algae oils, reselling to the fishoil market and recycling the (now somewhat lower) revenue to the Oil Prize fund. When the price of algae omega-3 cost competes with fish oil, not only will you have taken pressure off the world's fisheries, you will have provided childhood neurological development with a much needed boost.
If they can't even cost compete with fish oil then we know they can't do biodiesel.
Basically, if the DoE would avoid picking winners and just fund the Oil Prize it would not only stop this nonsense, there might be some real progress in nutrition for children at virtually zero risk to the taxpayer.
Gimmicks and flitting
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I have no personal knowledge of the feasibility of algae as a biofuel, but my observation is that most people and organizations (especially governments, vocal people and organizations) like the idea of resource conservation and overall "greenness", as well as "healthiness". Due to human nature (the ignorant sort), they are looking for easy solutions. So instead of a tax on fossil fuels (which would simultaneously promote conservation and renewable energy) or government mandates / rationing (note that I favor a fuel tax) they flit from easy solution to easy solution.
This fliting has been our government's modus operandi for the thirty-five to forty years that pollution, dependence on oil, and other related modern maladies have been (purportedly) treated as important. We have had forty years of fllitting, all the while avoiding the real solution-- the fuel tax.
On to the next gimmick/easy solution! Cash for clunkers! Tax credits for home insulation! Subsidies (by the utility companies) for compact flourescents! Cap and trade! Public service announcements! Pamphlets! Plastic doo dads printed with a green slogan! Algae! Miracle engine additives! Add your own examples!
Thank you Emily Waltz! I
Thank you Emily Waltz! I love it when someone finally organizes available information into a truthful "expose"!
This should all be obvious to anyone studying the industry, but all I see are news articles repeating companies' statements from their press releases, rather than analyzing it skeptically.
The industry does need more money to prosper, and it's a great idea to use algae for CCS and fuel, but we need to use public money to help keep the productive entrepreneurs from failing, not to provide bogus companies with floods of cash.
Peer Review My Arse
peace,
How can one write a critique of algae based bio-fuels without mentioning VERTICAL ALGAE PRODUCTION??
We need money spent on production, not more research!
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Algae production would be scaled up much faster if the government stops giving millions of grant money to algae researchers at universities and more for algae production. We have spent over $2.2 billion in the last 35 years on algae research at university level and have nothing to show for it. ENOUGH WITH THE RESEARCH! We have researched algae to death in the US. "We need algae producers, not more research." All algae IP is worthless unless you have producers that can use it.
Many algae producers are ready right now using "all off-the-shelf" existing proven "off-the-shelf" technologies to build out on hundreds and thousands of acres. WE NEED ALGAE PRODUCTION IN THE US NOW.
Vertical Algae Production
peace,
One more time....if one is going to write a CRITIQUE why focus on an antiquated field of the subject matter ..ie ... pond algae production when algae production science has taken a quantum leap forward (VERTICAL ALGAE PRODUCTION)?? Mother Jones should apolgize to it's readers and remove the article for it is a stain on it's intellectual integrity. Have you no honor?
Algae Farm to Produce 4.4 Million Gallons of Experimental Jet Fuel - An Arizona energy company is betting big on algae. PetroSun Biofuels has opened a commercial algae-to-biofuels farm on the Texas Gulf Coast near scenic Harlingen Texas. The farm is a 1,100 acre network of saltwater ponds, 20 acres of which will be dedicated to researching and developing an environmental jet fuel.
Of all the options for future jet biofuel production, algae is considered one of the most viable. It yields 30 times more energy per acre than its closest competitor, and requires neither fresh water, arable land used for cultivation, or consumable food, giving it an advantage over ethanol.
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/04/algae-farm-to-p.html
Virgin, Continental, Air New Zealand, UOP join Algal Biomass Organization - In Washington state, Air New Zealand, Continental, Virgin Atlantic Airways, and biofuel technology developer UOP, a Honeywell company, today announced they will join the Algal Biomass Organization (ABO).
“There is significant interest across multiple sectors in the potential of algae as an energy source and nowhere is that more evident than in aviation,” said Billy Glover, ABO co-chair and managing director of Environmental Strategy for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/06/20/virgin-continental-air-new-ze...
You need to read more and in
You need to read more and in depth regarding the economics of algae production and its related product processes. None of these companies are producing commercial quantities of algae or algae fuels - because none have economically feasible processes - vertical or other wise.
250-350 Patents and a partnership with BP(Largest oil producer)
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36,000 acs., in Florida committed to New Plant in Florida will produce 36,000gpy
Plus existing plant in Louisanna , And another new one in to be built in the Gulf (All announced by (BP) and the company is Verenium Symbol VRNM
The current interests and
The current interests and investments for production of biofuels using various species of algae are based on promises to achieve an economically sound process. The pros of the biology of algae are enthusing with CO2 as the main substrate and sunlight as energy source. However, there are intrinsic limitations, which most reports disregard in their descriptions of the potential of algae as a source for biofuels. Two important features (and there might be more) are the need for growth limiting conditions to enhance lipid accumulation and the very low cell concentration obtained i.e. very dilute cell suspensions (and the handling of a lot of water). Here are some results from the literature to illustrate these features. The home take message is to look at the whole picture and not just the exciting advantages. Algae accumulate large quantities of lipid as storage materials, but they do this when under stress and growing slowly (Rittman 2008). A key factor for oil accumulation is high light intensity and nitrogen deficiency (Solovchenko et al. 2008). In the comprehensive report of Sheehan et al 1998 it was stated "The common thread among the studies showing increased oil production under stress seems to be the observed cessation of cell division. While the rate of production of all cell components is lower under nutrient starvation, oil production seems to remain higher, leading to an accumulation of oil in the cells. The increased oil content of the algae does not to lead to increased overall productivity of oil. In fact, overall rates of oil production are lower during periods of nutrient deficiency. Higher levels of oil in the cells are more than offset by lower rates of cell growth". (Sheehan J, Dunahay T, Benemann J & Roessler P (1998). A Look back at the U.S. Department of Energy's Aquatic Species Program: Biodiesel from Algae NREL/TP-580-24190). They also state that "The factors that most influence cost are biological". Independent of which mass growth mode is chosen, raceway ponds or tubular photobioreactors, the final cell concentration is very low. A cell concentration of 4 gram dry weight per liter was reported for autotrophic growth of microalgae in a photobioreactor facility and 0.14 gram dry weight per liter in raceway ponds (Chisti 2007). The cell concentration of oleaginous yeast, grown heterotrophically was reported to be 106.6 gram dry weight per liter in a 15 l stirred tank fermentor (Li et al. 2007). Due to these biological limitiations the production of a low value/high volume product using microalgae is still far from being economically viable. Can research change these biological limitations?
References:
Chisti Y (2007). Biodiesel from algae. Biotechnol. Adv. 25: 294-306.
Li YH, Zhao ZB & Bai FW (2007). High density cultivation of oleaginous yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides Y4 in fed batch culture. Enzyme Microb.Biotechnol. 41:312-317.
Rittman BE (2008). Opportunities for renewable bioenergy using microorganisms. Biotechnol. Bioengng. 100: 203-212.
Slovchenko AE, Khozin-Goldberg I, Didi-Cohen S, Cohen Z & Merzylak MN (2008). Effects of light intensity and nitrogen starvationon growth, total fatty acids and arachidonic acid in the green microalga Parietochloris incise. J. Appl. Phycol. 20:245-251.
J.Stefan Rokem Ph.D. Dept. Microbiology & Molecular Genetics, IMRIC, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israel
More wasteful spending on research
A perfect example of old algae researchers living on grant money for the last 20 years and have not commercialized one thing. Ponds don't work, all get contaminated and generate less than 5,000 gallons per acre. Ponds will never make it for industrial use.
So this guy actually
So this guy actually completed 4 year degree with out actually knowing the likelihood of employment.....I wouldn't hire him.
Re: Omega 3
As someone who has had to endure working at an Omega 3 fish oil processing plant, and its stink. I can tell you that the source of this stuff IN NO WAY is a foodstuff. Omega 3 fish oil is made from "pogies"... Menhaden, which is inedible.
what good is a newborn baby?
Algal fuels are at the newborn stage. Several problems remain to be solved before these fuels will be economical to produce. Each problem is well known and well defined. These are not scientific problems so much as engineering problems.
The genetic engineering of hardy, productive algal species is also more an engineering problem than a scientific problem.
Peak Oil is threatened by all potential fuels that may be viable alternatives to petroleum. We all sympathize with those who believe in peak oil, and who are reluctant to let go of such a belief. But it is all part of the growing up process.
Algal fuel is one of many fuels destined to become viable alternatives to petroleum fuels.
GreenFuel
Full disclosure: I’ m a former GreenFuel employee.
Please consider some of your statements here specifically targeted at GreenFuel:
The GreenFuel system is not being used in Arizona. This is incorrect information. The source is guilty of extrapolating. Isn't that the point of this article? Dig deeper, check your facts.
Did anyone check the patent office before you printed the statement "They had no technology…”?
GreenFuel may have reported 44,000 gallons per acre at one time (likely pre-2005) but revised that number as other data was collected.
Cost competitive algae to biofuel process is a tremendously complex and potentially impossible undertaking. The complexity and potential make algae ripe for both incorrect (potentially naïve) assumptions and other less excusable manipulation of the facts.
To those of us that were part of the team; it was a worthwhile honorable venture.
R.I.P. GreenFuel
Algae Entrepreneurs need Manufacturing Money, not China Reseller
Everyone is trying to protect their market, whether they be in oil and gas or working for a large company subcontractor, a University lab or a startup. What is always the case is that if people do not own it they try to dismiss other possibilities.
For example, closed loop photobioractors which get around all the problems by eliminating the liquid phase and providing specific 100% PAR (photosynthetically active radiation) surrounding entire cell bodies and engineered to a vertical farming structure, would have a totally different calculation. The per acre amount is limited only to how high one builds the PBR units.
Likewise, by elimination of the limiting factors and a concentrated CO2 source, optimal systems are created and the growth rates are only limited by how much moisture is available in the aerobic environment. The Femtobeam LLC photobioreactors are already demonstrated, mass balances are already calculated down to the molecule and the last thing we need are other researchers.
What is needed is indeed to stop the game about research and fund the manufacturing facilities to be owned and operated by the entrepreneurs who own the technology. This way job creation occurs, not a giveaway to China or a high priced item for a military subcontract or support perpetually for post doc students.
Production is going to continue and once Cap Costs are in place and done, the algae does not need any investment. A starter for 10 different strains can be had from a forward thinking professor for $100.
The nutricueticals are extremely important and the manufacturers of chemical fertilizers, animal feed, toxic baby formula and others are just as curious about algae as the biofuels industry is.
What is happening here is a false pretence that working groups need to be formed and research needs to be done, etc... This is not true. We have been in R&D for over 25 years and have perfected our proprietary IP and Trade Secrets. These groups are not allowed to see other people's processes because they don't want their idea to be technology transferred to a "team" of experts at "so and so" University and then lose their business to a University spin off company to be manufactured in CHINA.
Those of us who have been up against Asian manufacturers and their big business partners know this and that is the reason why we have prototypes that can be demonstrated and secrets that make it difficult to reverse engineer. Contracts too.
The problem is funding for manufacturing and support for the entrepreneurial companies and small businesses that can build scalable closed loop photobioreactor power plants.
There is nothing left to prove and growth rates can happen in front of your eyes. A calculator is all that is necessary to know what is possible
Experience tells me that anyone who uses the term "per acre" is protecting Dow chemical bags in a behind the scenes deal with Petroleum producers. The only correct way to calculate dry wt yield is to know acre feet per year of water in consumptive use.
Everyone knows algae dies and produces toxins. The hazards produced by the experiments with Ames were probably to try and thwart the industry. After all, did they think the dead toxic algae would be ok when they released it into the ocean?
We have the only way to grow biomass without toxins and can clearly explain and show why to qualified investors. We can also produce as much algae as there is water for because we are scalable. We are not for sale and neither are the photobioreactors. We will be building turn key systems ourselves and sharing profit with water rights holders. They can sit back and collect a check in the mail like wildcatters used to do. It is all run remotely and automated.
The systems will not be accessible because there is room for tampering and the first market in fact is probably vaccine production. The experts are not being totally forthcoming about their objectives. The small print of DOE says they retain ownership of technologies. Meanwhile Secretary Chu has said he plans to "share" everything with China.
How is that helping US energy independence, manufacturing, production and jobs? Not at all, I say. Maybe this is why the Green Jobs appointment of Van Jones did not last. After all, that is what happens when you try and compete with Asian manufacturers.
http://www.biofuelsdigest,com “Algae, Algae, Toxin Free”
http://femtobeam.com
"No one seemed to be
"No one seemed to be producing oil."
No kidding. If the author had done their homework, they would have learned that the technology behind this is extremely immature. There's a ton of testing still to be done. Nobody in their right minds tests things at an industrial/commercial scale, they test things in very small samples. Oil wasn't turned into plastic in a year, and the transistor took about three decades to even begin to make a dent on modern living.
"Most companies were simply growing scum without analyzing it."
And this was determined... how? By a visiting job seeker? That just doesn't smell right.
"Some were bizarrely secretive."
Bizarre!?! You've got to be kidding me! If you were a small company with 3 or 4 people working your butts off in a lab on a patentable product and process that's potentially a MASSIVE gold mine the likes of which humanity has never known, you really think they're NOT going to be secretive? I mean seriously, that is one monstrously stupid statement. That's the stupidest thing I've heard all week.
This is an incredibly cut-throat area. Tech startups often live and die in a matter of months for a hundred different reasons. This is a very well known occurrence. You don't expect every new business in a brand new field of technology to survive. Out of a hundred, two or three might survive five years. Clearly, the author doesn't know the first thing about business, or has an agenda writing this article.
""I thought there'd be established companies where I could get a job, but there weren't," he says."
Did he really say/think that?? Really?!? Because driving all over the continent sleeping on people's couches is not a very good way to go job hunting in an industry you claim to know little about. A small startup lab is not going to hire some unspecialized bloke who could easily be bought off by a competing lab - especially when investment money is hard to come by.
"Some companies have promised impossible amounts of oil based on speculation"
*GASP* They didn't! (/sarcasm). Imagine that, tech startups speculating on how much they might be able to produce of a goldmine product in order to secure some scraps of venture capital. And for the record, none of those claims are impossible. We thought TV was impossible once too, but it wasn't. That's an incredibly bold (and ignorant) statement for a technology that was only just born a few years ago.
Okay... what about Adam. Reading this article, you get the feeling he's a Biochemist, probably an MSc or PhD to be expecting a job in a natal technology like algal fuels, and given the date of the article (Sep/Oct '09) he must be unemployed since he supposed couldn't find a job.
So I Googled the guy.
He has a Biochem undergrad degree, and he has a job - in the algal fuel industry! What does that say about the author if the guy they're quoting as implying all sorts of negative things about how useless the tech is, is right there working in the industry and has been for 7 months! Even more, he shows on his web pages that he has a great deal of confidence in the industry.
Is this even the same guy? Did the article's author talk to some other Adam Freeman with a biochem degree from KSU? Seems rather unlikely... but these are pretty divergent viewpoints we're being given. I'll take the words of Adam himself over the words of some hack journalist any day. I suspect this may be a case of some gross misquotation.
Good job making Mother Jones look like some third-rate hack "news" magazine. This was literally the most laughably stupid and uneducated piece of journalistic trash I've read in quite some time. My advice to the author: Stick to what you know, and educate yourself on what you don't. Writing crap like this does nothing for your reputation.
Explaining Peak Oil's human cost.
Today http://www.suburbanempire.com has a post about explaining the human costs of peak oil by turning Hubbert's Peak around. We will not be powering all that we are running off of algae, corn squeezein's, moonbeams, coal, wind, sunshine or a combination of all the above. Get used to working hard again.
In Defense of Algae
Yes, algae biofuels are expensive and not served by overhype. Yet, unless we want to continue to be overdependent on petroleum to satisfy our liquid energy needs, algae is the only long-term biofuel option. Why? Because corn ethanol uses approximately 33% of our corn crop to displace 5% of U.S. gasoline consumption (9 billion gallons of corn ethanol = 6 billion gallons of gasoline). 2nd Generation sources like "cellulosic ethanol" are flawed as they will require the retooling of our entire modern agricultural apparatus and produce a fuel with inferior energy characteristics (ethanol).
Algae biofuels can be produced on non-agricultural land, do not require freshwater, consume C02 as a feedstock, have proven yields of 5000gal/acre (at least 13x of corn ethanol), and can be refined into gas, diesel, or aviation fuel. While algal biofuels are currently not economical, that does not mean that it should not be a long-term funding priority for the government. If we had not invested in solar and wind in the 1970s, we would not have a thriving renewable energy industry today. I really do not understand the point of this article other than to trash algae biofuels. Am wondering if Ms. Waltz can recommend a better solution for our long-term transportation energy security?
Algae energy
Algae is one of the hottest sectors of the renewable energy industry. New technologies are emerging rapidly, investors are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into companies all around the world and costs per gallon are steadily coming down. Algae certainly represents a versatile energy option, but is it truly renewable or sustainable?
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For further reading on the
For further reading on the wild promises coming from the algae industry see Emily Waltz's story in Nature Biotechnology: http://www.emilywaltz.com/Algae_feature_-_Jan_2009.pdf
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