ALGAE OP-ED: Where are the promised algae fuels?

HOUSTON - March 11, 2015 - PRLog -- In September, 2012, the take-away message from the opening session at the 2012 Algae Biomass Summit,
which was attended by the alleged best industry experts and researchers, was “that algae production is very close to commercial deployment, but shoring up government support mechanisms for algae-derived products—and removing regulatory barriers that hinder algae cultivation—threaten to keep the industry from going big in the near term” without ever identifying the barriers.  After 60 or so years of government support, regulatory barriers should not be the impediment to keeping the industry from going big.  The only regulatory barrier is an outdated Congressional Mandate that only allows the DOE Algae Biomass Program to fund algae research and NOT what is now needed - commercial production. Algae research grant recipients stated several years ago that “all algae technology hurdles had been met.  It was all engineering in scale-up going forward.”

An algae grant recipient claimed at that meeting in September, 2012 that it harvested 31 million gallons of algae to date and was beginning to prove out algae’s crop-like cultivation characteristics. “We’re proving that you can grow this like a crop…[w]e’ve had a full year of continuous harvests.”  Where is that algae, and where are the millions of gallons they should have been able to produce since then and where is the fuel?  When will the US benefit from the promised algae-based fuels?

Another company that benefitted from federal funds claimed at that meeting that its company’s story is “all about co-location” and was going after what he called the “insatiable demand” markets: high-value feed ingredients, first, and advanced biofuels later.  Two and a half years later, according to its website, it now “designs, builds, and operates commercial scale bioreactors that enable efficient conversion of light and CO2 into high value microbial feedstock.”

So where is the commercial production for algae-based fuels?  In India, China, Spain, Portugal, and Australia, to name some countries.  In the United States, all we get are excuses.   Research grants for the commercial algae production industry for fuels industry have been hijacked by lobbyists and researchers, and the federal agency bestowed with the responsibility of making us energy independent has changed its mission rather than admitting defeat.  The technologies have now made their way to foreign countries.  The jobs that are being created are not in the US.  Without a change in the mentality in Washington, DC, and a change in the Congressional Mandate to promote commercial algae production using existing technologies that have been proven outside the lab in commercial production, we are building an algae fuels industry for the rest of the world, at the further expense of the US taxpayer.