HALF A BIL FED $$ TO BIOFUELS

Federal Agencies Commit $510M to Biofuels; The Navy wants biofuels, and it wants them now
Katherine Tweed, August 16, 2011 (Greentech Media)

"…The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy have teamed up with the Navy to spend up to $510 million over the next three years to advance drop-in biofuels for aviation and marine applications to power the military.

"…[L]ast week, the U.S. Army announced the creation of an Energy Initiatives Office to help the agency centrally plan and deploy renewable energy projects. The Army is looking to get 25 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025."

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"The Navy also announced a partnership with the DOE’s research arm, ARPA-E to develop grid-level energy storage. The Navy has set some ambitious clean energy goals for the coming years, including having half of the energy used by the department coming from alternative fuel or alternative sources by 2020...

"The funding for drop-in biofuels is more than the entire funding that ARPA-E received in 2009, which was about $400 million. The focus on biofuels will certainly reignite the fuel vs. food debate, as there have yet to be commercially competitive fuels from other sources, such as algae…[though the navy] has a deal to get hundreds of thousands gallons of algae fuel from Solazyme…"