[lbo-talk] Prospects for algae biofuels?

Dwayne Monroe dwayne.monroe at gmail.com
Mon Jan 12 12:10:03 PST 2009


Gar:

The question was never if fuel made from algae could replace fossil fuels once made. Processes for turning coal or biomass into fuel indisguishable from those derived from oil have been know since at least WWII. The question was if it could be made sustainably, cheaply or in large quantities. A test flight doe not answer that. Oh and if you follow your own link, it has been updated. Less than 3% of the fuel mix was algae. It was mostly Jatropha - which has its own problems .

.............

Sure.

"Sustainably, cheaply or in large quantities" are questions that can only be answered in the doing. So far, there are design contests, pilot programs and similarly small beer efforts. My argument is that there are reasons to believe these can be scaled up into the big time (that just may be the E talking though). You can't know however, till you seriously try. I say we seriously try. But I'm the everything and the kitchen sink sort of lad. Plus, I'm no longer sure what the word 'sustainable' means anymore.

To one group, it sensibly means de-carbonized and non-polluting (e.g., modern life, just cleaner). To another, it suggests hemp clothes, compost toilets, 'guerrilla' gardening and wheel barrel taxis (about which, GOOG "How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" for what I consider to be a bit of eco theater absurd).

Gar wrote:

Oh, and the particular algae used - it turns out that the processes was a special bioengineered algae grown in the absence of sunlight and raised on sugar. Which means you lose the whole advantage of deriving fuel from algae - the the efficiency with which algae converts sunlight to power. You are indirectly converting corn or sugarcane to biofuel - with an extra add step of using algae to convert carbs to fats. Whoops!

....

Well, you've got me (or rather, them) there. Still, this dovetails back to a point I made earlier (and have made several times before): the problem with biofuels is agribusiness.

Or more to the point, the way agribusiness wants to introduce biofuels into our life.

.d.



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