Commercial Fuel From Algae Still Years Away

chrnb sends along this quote from a report at Reuters: "Filling your vehicle's tank with fuel made from algae is still as much as a decade away, as the emerging industry faces a series of hurdles to find an economical way to make the biofuel commercially. Estimates on a timeline for a commercial product, and profits, vary from two to 10 years or more. Executives and industry players who gathered at the Algae Biomass Summit this week in San Diego said they need to push for breakthroughs along the entire chain — from identifying the best organisms to developing efficient harvesting methods. ... So far on the list: finding the right strain of algae among thousands of species that will produce high yields; designing systems where the desired algae can multiply and other species don't invade and disrupt the process; and extracting its oils without degrading other parts of the algae that can be made into side products and sold as well."

Comments

Exxon likes algae

[No Lucifer]

I attended a presentation hosted by an Exxon exec last week (for business school). He compared Exxon to BP. BP has been pursuing all sorts of energy alternatives (wind, solar, etc). Exxon's position, in short, is that they are an oil company so that's what they worry about. They don't pursue other energy sources because they are only viable now with subsidies, and they don't want to base their business on that (seems reasonable). BUT, the one alt fuel they are pursuing (ignoring natural gas) is algae. They seem to think it has a real future, and I believe they know what they're talking about.

(And an interesting aside... we often think of BP, Exxon, Shell etc as being these scary, large influential corporations. And maybe they are, but this exec described how truly small they are compared to the Saudi, Iranian and Qatari national oil companies. Exxon and BP combined produce less oil than the Nigerian national corporation)