$85 Billion For Algal and Biofuel Research
Creating biofuels from algae isn’t new, but the recent announcement of $85 billion in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy should make it more widespread. The funding package will also promote the development of other advanced biofuels, but none of it will be used to create cellulosic ethanol. What’s so great about algal fuel that warrants this investment? It is one of the few biofuels that is almost completely carbon neutral.
Biofuels like ethanol require a lot of energy to create and refine. Corn-based ethanol requires that you use a lot of land to grow the corn, use fossil fuels (or more ethanol) to power the harvesters that will reap the crop, and then use more fuel and energy to refine it. Even once that process is completed, ethanol requires even more energy to ship it because the biofuel is too corrosive to be transported through a pipeline. Algal fuel has virtually none of these drawbacks.
Algae is one of the most carbon-absorbant plants in the world. In fact, preliminary production figures for the fledgling fuel have shown that algae, as it grows, absorbs so much carbon dioxide from the air that it completely neutralizes the carbon emissions used to harvest and refine it into fuel. And, with funding and advanced techniques, algal fuel could conceivably result in a net reduction of carbon emissions. Also, once it is refined, algal fuel is a lot more stable than ethanol. It can be mixed with gasoline at refineries with no corrosive or negative long-term effects, so it would not require any special transportation like ethanol. Back in May of this year, a New Mexico-based company announced their intention to seriously expand their algal fuel production for use as a gasoline additive and as an airplane jet fuel additive. You can read about it here.
