Algae: Times Have Changed...Needs Have Changed.

April 14, 2013 - PRLog -- NAA’s Algae Farming Workshop was a very successful event focusing on the common interest – getting algae production out of research and development and into commercial production .  It highlighted other co-products that are made from algae besides fuel like Omega 3 EPA/DHA nutraceuticals, feeds as well as strain selection and lipids for large-scale production as well as harvesting equipment, rural tax credits, potential off-take contarcts and economics. During this highly collaborative workshop NAA, Executive Director, Barry Cohen announced three new initiatives.

“1.  The DOE Biomass Program has been telling us for the last 7 years that their project funding is controlled by a Congressional mandate that restricts grant funding , basically, to research and development of technologies at the university level, and that and I would have to hire a lobbyist if we thought the money could and should be better spent.  Nobody at the DOE is willing to go to Congress and explain that times have changed and needs have changed.  I am.”

“2.  While NAA has really tried to focus on creating an algae production industry in the US, we’re finding out that other countries are more aggressive and supportive than ours. Foreign governments are moving faster than the US on commercial algae production for fuels and co-products.   The Chinese and Saudis will be producing algae oil shortly, and the Israelis and Canadians are already producing.   Many other countries have fast-tracked commercialization and are scaling-up algae production, and NAA is reaching out internationally to expand collaboration on commercial algae production issues.  It’s interesting that, after close to 60 years of research through the Department of Energy, algae has conveniently been included as a crop making commercial production the problem of the USDA.   FOLKS, WE DON’T HAVE ANOTHER 60 YEARS!”

“3.  NAA is proud to announce that one of the incubator companies has developed large commercial scale algae growing units for algae farms, the Algae Growth Cell ™, which is the first large-scale commercial growing unit that was successfully tested at an NAA incubator site. “