Not ready for slime time: Algae present challenges as fuel source
April 7, 2013
As debate continues over raising the ethanol content in motor fuel to reduce emissions, another form of green energy is coloring the discussion.
And it’s not just pond scum anymore.
On Jan. 1, Congress made algae-based fuel production eligible for a $1.01-per-gallon cellulosic biofuel production federal tax credit.
Cellulosic biofuels typically are made from woody, non-food material such as grasses or wood chips, in contrast to ethanol, which competes with the food market for raw material — usually corn in the United States and sugar cane in some other countries.
But algae has another big advantage that makes it attractive to energy companies: It converts the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into oxygen, which could be significant if the Obama administration’s measures against climate change make carbon emissions more expensive.
“The oil companies are making a long-term bet on algae,” said Will Thurmond, CEO of Emerging Markets Online, a consulting service on bioenergy.
“It is carbon negative,” he said. “They see it as a hedge against the risk if there is a carbon tax.”
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Legislation in 2007 mandated that refineries include an increasing amount of cellulosic biofuels in their products, reaching 16 billion gallons by 2022.
So far, cellulosic production has been insufficient to meet the government targets. The Environmental Protection Agency, which enforces the mandate, scaled back the 2012 target from 500 million gallons to less than 13 million gallons.
The American Petroleum Institute successfully challenged the 2012 target, arguing that even the lower level exceeded total domestic production.
But the industry continues the quest for cellulosic fuel.
Exxon Mobil Corp. invested $600 million in 2009 on algae-related research, partnering with California-based Synthetic Genomics.
Four years later, company officials say that while they know how to turn algae into oil, doing so economically at commercial scale remains elusive.
“It is harder than we had hoped,” said Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Michael Dolan, speaking at the IHS-CeraWeek conference earlier this year in Houston.
The big challenge is extracting enough oil from an algae cell to make its production economic.
The process is hardly new: Algae and other organisms turn into oil naturally over millions of years in geologic formations.
And the water-borne single-cell creatures grow fast, making them theoretically capable of producing 30 times more energy per acre than land crops, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
ExxonMobil (XOM) is spending $600 million on a 10-year effort to turn algae into oil. And Royal Dutch Shell (RDS/A) has invested billions of dollars in a Brazilian biofuels venture, buying up sugar cane mills, plantations, and refineries to make ethanol.
I doubt very much that cancer and stressed cells will be the only revenue generator from targeting PS. Fatty acids and reduction of CO2 to methanol.... who ever knew
Peregrine best be aware of all PS Targeting potentials before signing on the dotted line
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