Down there in Grist is a press release from an Israeli company, Rosetta Green. In it an exec says he is not only convinced algae can compete with regular petroleum, but says “most of the large oil companies” are heavily investing in it. Some analyst somewhere must have real numbers to put on that. It’d be worth reporting.
But not clear is whether oil companies hedging their bets by investing in green alternative fuels means much. A big example is on the front page of the NYTimes Biz Section today, where respected reporter Andrew Pollack dives into the murky world of algae-based fuel under a clever hed, Not Just Pond Scum. It is about genetic engineering, selective breeding, and hopes that vast acreages of green water can let the oil industry sell its stuff mostly for something worthwhile, such as feedstock for semi-permanent plastics and other goods, rather than for public burning. A nugget that may or may not be true, but I hope it is, comes up part way through. He quotes Craig Venter declaring that wild algae provide 40 percent of the oxygen delivered to the atmosphere annually. I’ll use that, even though it came with no footnotes, next time some loon calls the Amazon the lungs of the planet – a charming but not well-informed trope I’ve disliked for decades.
Pollack’s piece is solid. It leaves things out – such as the larger world of oil company investment (he mentions Exxon-Mobil, but leaves out hefty investments by BP andother companies) – but it is just one story. What it has, notable in a business section, is focus on worries from some quarters that super-algae could escape the gene-jiggered farm and wreak havoc in the wild. Some fear it could out-compete its ancestors, upsetting ecosystems, and make the public hate seeing so much green gunk everywhere. It’s balanced, with learned experts saying the wild algae has optimized itself for living in the wild – and would beat the chloroplast pants off the lab darlings. Pollack reports that regulators will check things carefully.
Confusing to me is a passage on selection of algae that absorb less sunlight, but use it more efficiently, so that other algae deeper in the water can get more light. How does that square with selective breeding of algae, as the story describes, that favors the darkest green variants for succeeding rounds?
Other Algae and Biofuel News:
- Wall St. Journal – Aude Lagorce: Flying Algae-Powered Planes ; Look! Up in the Sky! The super algae have escaped and are covering that airplane! Actually, Lagorce reports on a demonstration by the European EADS airliner maker of a DA42 model running one turboprop on algae juice, at the Farnborough Air Show in England. This piece has a stat that (hoping it’s true) Pollack should’ve use on the oil productivity of algae per acre compared to other, dirt-rooted biocrops.
- San Diego Union-Tribune – Bruce V. Bigelow: Pond Scum, and Crude Oil: Our Mayor issues in Invitation to Sloganeers ;
- Eureka – Tom Shelley: Algae biofuel outperforms that derived from oil ; This site, for engineers and their fans, provides a short, dense dollop of data on the one-wing-clapping green airplane.
- LA Times – Tiffany Hsu: Big Oil and biofuels: BP pays $98.3 million for Verenium’s biofuels branch ; A well-focussed news story.
- Greentech Media – Eris Wesoff: The Return of Fed-Funded Algae Fuel Research ; A good roundup from this blogger with a touch of cynicism, and a link (see Grist below) to expert literature from nat’l lab analysts.
- And just a reminder that the regular kinds of algae are dangerous too: Bolton News (UK) Toxic algae on “Ironman’ water ; Straying completely off topic, The Tracker had also to pause at this site to read this startling report: Dead ponies found dumped in canal. It’s a model of heartfelt reporting on horrified, heart-broken members of the citizenry.
Grist for the Mill:
Rosetta (via NASDAQ wire) Press Release ; Exxon-Mobil Algae biofuels page; DOE National Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap ; Oregon Dept. of Human Sources Press Release (on natural, toxic algae in a lake).
-Charlie Petit
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