ABO Blog

U.S. Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) visited Sapphire Energy’s Research & Development facility in Las Cruces New Mexico yesterday to learn more about the company’s revolutionary process to convert algae into “green crude”, a drop-in replacement for fossil crude oil. The Las Cruces facility is the largest, photosynthetic, fully integrated, algae-to-energy testing facility in the world.

At 22 acres, the site has more than 70 active ponds, varying in size from 14-foot test ponds to 300-foot, one million liter production ponds.  Sapphire Energy has over 180,000 hours of pilot data to prove that we can grow and harvest algae outdoors in open ponds year-round, from the scorching, 100+ degree summers, to the freezing winters.

During the visit, Senator Udall remarked on the need for better federal policy to help accelerate solutions like Sapphire’s. “We have a problem with parity,” Udall said. “We need to build a coalition, Democrats and Republicans, and figure out how to get that parity.”

Parity is the idea that technologies delivering a new generation advanced biofuels should get the same tax and regulatory treatment as first-generation biofuels.

Parity has been a primary objective of ABO’s legislative efforts of the past few years, and as technologies like Sapphire’s and others move out of the labs and into commercial production, it’s more important than ever to have a level playing field.

Earlier this year, ABO and its allies secured inclusion of the second generation biofuel credits (which include a $1.01 per gallon credit for algae fuels) in tax extenders legislation approved by the Senate Finance Committee, and in House legislation introduced by Rep. Earl Blumenauer. The issue awaits congressional action after the November 4 elections. ABO continues to work with the House and Senate tax writing committees in support of extending the 2nd generation biofuel tax credit.

Don’t miss the story in Biofuels Digest on the latest research into how the cost of algae-derived fuels can drop below $3.00 per gallon.

The Digest look at research out of the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and BioProducts (NAABB) consortium that identifies key technology areas that can be targeted to achieve cost-competitive algae fuels. Considering that the NAABB was already able to find ways to bring the price of algae fuels down to about $7.50 from more than $200, it may be worth looking at their recommended areas for improvement.

Among the processes where cost improvements could make the biggest difference:

1. Increasing the growth rate from 25 grams per square meter per day to 30 grams.
2. Increasing lipid content from 25% to 50%
3. Cutting harvest cost by 50%
4. Cut extraction cost by 50%
5. Sell Lipid Extracted Algae residual biomass for $500 per ton.

The Biofuels Digest article explains how several ongoing efforts to reduce CO2 costs, pond liner costs, ash content and manage water usage are some of the approaches that are finding improvements in each of the areas above.

These might sound like big hurdles, but remember that the algae industry is new and dramatic advances are being made every month. Some would argue the industry has already met more difficult challenges than these. And one approach alone, deploying technologies at larger scales, could achieve substantial cost reductions in all of these areas simultaneously.

Read more at Biofuels Digest.

Hat tip to Solzayme, which today is receiving the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. As the first time algae technology has been recognized by this prestigious award, it is a huge honor for Solazyme and a new milestone for the algae industry.

The Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award promotes the environmental and economic benefits of developing and using novel green chemistry. This annual award recognizes technologies that incorporate the principles of green chemistry into chemical design, manufacture and use.

Since its inception in 1996, the EPA in partnership with the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute has received thousands of nominations from leading companies, entrepreneurs and academic researchers pioneering new discoveries.

The award is yet another proof point that algae technology no longer is just a promising idea, but a beneficial reality. Today, hundreds of companies and tens of thousands of people around the world are developing products derived from algae to address global challenges of food, energy and climate change. We salute the team at Solazyme for their achievement.

Solazyme’s oils and ingredients are currently being sold commercially in a broad array of applications including food, fuel, home and personal care and industrial products. More info is available via the web at www.solazyme.com.

A great report by Biofuels Digest today is the primer everybody needs to read if they want the latest on reducing the cost of algae-derived fuels. The skinny: Just three years of technical advances have caused the expected price of algal biofuels to drop like a rock.

The story takes a look at the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and BioProducts, the NAABB, a research consortium tasked with advancing technology in algae biofuels along seven key areas:

“(1) the development of new strains, (2) cultivation processes with these new strains, (3) harvest processing of the algal biomass, (4) extraction processing for crude lipids and LEA, (5) LEA conversion and LEA product trials, (6) direct conversion processes of algal biomass to biocrude, and (7) upgrading lipids and biocrudes to fuels.”

Biofuels Digest points out that NAABB got started with $48.6 million from the DOE and $19.1 million in private funds.

Over three years those funds were used to develop technology advances that reduced the expected cost of a gallon of algae derived fuel from $240 per gallon to about $7.50.

That’s still too high to compete with fossil oil today, but who expects crude oil prices to drop by 97% with an R&D investment of a few million dollars?

With a relatively meager investment of less than $70 million over three years, this consortium has been able to make astonishing improvements in cost reductions and put the industry on a path to affordable and sustainable fuels. As a frame of reference, during the same three years the oil and gas industry spent nearly $434 million on lobbying efforts. Just imagine if our energy production industries were aligned on the benefits of developing domestic, low cost and drop-in fuels.

Oil companies are spending trillions looking for new oil, and those investment returns are diminishing, not increasing.

Today’s story was only part I of a look at algal fuel prices. As you can expect, we’re looking forward to reading Part II.

Read more at Biofuels Digest

In a sign of growing awareness among policy makers of carbon utilization as a climate change mitigation platform, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) today paid a joint visit to ABO platinum member BioProcess Algae in Portsmouth, RI, to see first-hand how algae can be used to convert waste CO2 into valuable products at cost-competitive prices.

The visit was part of a two-state tour by the Senate colleagues to witness the impacts of climate change on coastal communities and the importance of coal in West Virginia.  In June, the Senators joined together for a colloquy on the Senate floor to discuss the effects of climate change and the importance of coal in America’s energy portfolio.

During the tour, Sen. Whitehouse discussed the strain that climate change, development and over-fishing have had on the state’s fisheries, and noted that algae not only help address climate change, but offer an alternative source of oils and protein that could ease demand on fish-derived sources of these nutritional components.  BioProcess Algae CEO, Tim Burns, noted that the company’s algae production facility in Shenandoah, Iowa, is already delivering algae-derived fish and animal feed produced from waste CO2.

For his part, Sen. Manchin stressed the need for federal policy to support the development of CO2 utilization technologies. “Carbon can be a product instead of a problem,” he noted, pointing out that large coal-fired power plants in his state and elsewhere sit on large areas of underutilized land that could support algae carbon utilization projects.

ABO has been leading a campaign to secure approval by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the use of carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technologies to meet the emissions reductions targets set by the agency for new and existing power plants. This common sense approach reduces overall emissions, creates a revenue stream for utilities that offsets the cost of compliance, keeps rates low for taxpayers and stimulates economic development and job creation across the country.

ABO has started a petition via the White House “We the People” initiative and is calling for anyone who supports common sense, market-driven, job-creating and emissions-reducing technologies to sign the petition, located at: http://wh.gov/ilUxI.

We can do better than just bury CO2. Utilizing waste CO₂ will create jobs, reduce costs to ratepayers and unleash a new wave of innovation across the country. Yet the power generation industry will not be able to make the investments in these technologies without regulatory certainty from the EPA. We’ll continue to make the case. Please join us.

More on ABO’s efforts and the case for CO2 utilization can be found at www.algaebiomass.org/petition.