OBAMA ENERGY DEPT BOOSTS ALGAE BIOFUELS

DOE to accelerate algae-based biofuel development
Anna Austin, November 11, 2009 (Biomass Magazine)

"Valerie Sarisky-Reed of the U.S. DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy talked about the direction the DOE is taking to accelerate the development of algae-based biofuels…She said the agency intends to develop advanced biofuels—hydrocarbons and other high-density fuels that can be drop in replacements diesel and gasoline—in a more accelerated fashion than cellulosic ethanol…"

[Valerie Sarisky-Reed, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, DOE:] “We learned a lot over the past 20 years, and we believe we can apply that to a faster deployment phase…This is now becoming a priority fuel we need to consider, and that’s why we’re moving into the advanced biofuels arena… It’s an extremely diverse feedstock that comes from several kingdoms—this broad scope of diversity is something that we’d like to tap into and capture… If we can harness that type of productivity, and do so in a sustainable fashion, we can look at this in a different scenario.”

click to enlarge

"Algae has the potential to fit in [DOE’s] advanced biofuels scenario and has been a topic of great attention over the past couple of years…Sarisky-Reed highlighted the high productivity of algae and it’s massive presence in the ocean, pointing out that if each algal cell were lined end to end there would be enough algae to reach the moon and back 15 billion times…[A] troublesome algal bloom near the Olympic Stadium in China yielded more than 3 million tons of biomass in a three-month period…In the Billion-Ton Study that the DOE released in 2005, it was determined the U.S. has 1.3 billion tons of sustainably available biomass…"

[Sarisky-Reed:] “We could produce about 60 billion tons of cellulosic ethanol…or one-third of what we anticipate we will need in our transportation sector. That’s not insignificant, but algae weren’t even taken into consideration [in the 2005 study], and if we have this type of productivity, we can see liquid transportation fuels, from domestic sources, produce almost 100 percent (of fuel needed in U.S.)…[so we need to] give it the research it deserves…”

click to enlarge

"In regard to algae’s relevance to advanced biofuels, Reed said many people are aware of high-oil producing algae and its potential to far outweigh terrestrial crop productivity. To assess the current state of algae technology and determine the next steps toward commercialization of algal biofuel processes, the DOE is developing the National Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap, which will be ready for publication in late December…

"…[M]ajor areas in algae that should be focused on are basic algal biology, cultivation and production, integration and scale up, sustainability and economic analysis…The DOE released a solicitation through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 where $35 million was dedicated to advanced biofuels and $50 million to algal biofuels…On the advanced biofuels scale, Reed said the DOE is hoping to accelerate development of hydrocarbons to a five-year time frame to pilot scale demonstration. [For algae, it could be 10 years]…"