San Diego Just Beginning to Assess Needs of Emerging Algae Industry
Bruce V. Bigelow5/8/09Comments (3)Follow @bvbigelow
(Page 2 of 2)
the remaining $307 million for construction of demonstration- and commercial-scale biorefineries, advanced biofuels research, and ethanol research.
“I think what’s really great is that we were immediately contacted by a couple of national laboratories that want to collaborate,” Kay said. The labs represent a good match, Kay added, because the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO, and the Sandia National Laboratory in Sandia, NM, are not as strong on the biological side of their renewable energy programs.
Kay said another encouraging outcome is that eight or nine companies have approached him about participating in the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology, and are particularly interested in helping to sponsor an economic life-cycle analysis of the algae-based biofuels industry. The companies that have actually committed include Sapphire Energy, the San Diego algae-to-biofuels company, and Biolite, a new startup founded in the San Diego area by Michael Melnick of San Francisco-based CMEA Ventures. Such a study would assess the overall cost and economic impact of developing the industry necessary to produce algae-based fuels such as diesel, gasoline and jet fuel. To avoid the missteps made by corn-based ethanol producers, Kay said, “We also want an environmental assessment done to evaluate the energy cost of each one of the steps in the process.”
San Diego’s recent series of algae-related events did not result in a checklist of core issues that need to be addressed, said Lisa Bicker, CEO of Cleantech San Diego, a nonprofit industry group. But she identified unanticipated regulatory issues as one area that poses a challenge to San Diego’s emerging algae-based technology cluster. Startups that plan to grow algae in ponds or tanks, for example, would likely have to comply with regulations established by California’s State Water Resources Control Board. If San Diego’s algae-based biofuel startups are serious about building large-scale demonstration plants, Bicker added, “We need to get serious about the industry’s infrastructure needs. We did not go into what those issues mean in depth.”
Kay has said that roughly 1 percent of what the government has put into biomedical research has gone to plant and microbial research—and only about 1 percent of that has gone into research that focuses on algae. As a result, starting an algae-based renewable energy company poses more risk than a biotech startup that is based on a huge foundation of biomedical research. Nevetheless, Kay said, “There’s enough justified optimism about algae that we really want to put the research in to determine if it’s going to be economically feasible.”
Bruce V. Bigelow is the editor of Xconomy San Diego. You can e-mail him at bbigelow@xconomy.com or call (619) 669-8788
Glenn Mosier
5/8/09 4:34 pm
San Diego and the Imperial Valley have everything it takes to make algae-based fuels commercially viable. On Wednesday I went on the 3 hour Imperial Valley Alternative Energy Bus Tour. The highlight was our visit to the SunEco Energy algae operation. The magnitude of what they are doing is impressive. The video on their website has some good shots of the 10-acre ponds which have been recently built or are under construction. These are in addition to the ponds which have been in existence for a couple of decades.
Elverna Turner
5/10/09 2:28 am
This is an awful plan. Using Imperial Valley for algae-based fuel production would be removing land capable of food production much like the fatal flaw of corn & soybeans for ethanol. Why not grow algae in vertical columns, in closed systems, on land not capable of food crop production? They’re being too hasty at handing out the research dollars without fully examining the implications and options.
algaepreneur
5/11/09 8:10 am
To learn more about the fast-track commercialization of the algae industry, you may want to check out this website: http://www.nationalalgaeassociation.com. They are the first algae trade association in the U.S.