Algae technology is unique in its ability to produce a useful, high-value oil and animal feed from waste Carbon Dioxide and poor quality water. Algae can be a provider of economic, non-polluting "algae oil" which can in turn be used as an input for the production of biodiesel. It is believed that algae can yield between 1,000 to 20,000 gallons of oil per acre, depending on the specific strain.
“At $10 to $20 a barrel of oil, algae is tough to bring to market,” says Thomas Byrne, secretary of the ABO. “If petroleum is at $50 to $60 a barrel, that’s very different. We think algae will be competitive.”
Bill Gates just invested in the San Diego start-up Sapphire Energy, which intends to make auto fuel from algae and then expand into developing gasoline equivalents like diesel and jet fuel.
“The yield is much higher than anything else we know of, and it’s not competing with food sources,” says Bill Glover, director of environmental strategy for Boeing Commercial Aircraft. “We want people to enjoy commercial aviation with a clean-energy solution. This is a way to do that.”
“We’re getting tremendous interest from plastics companies -- some really big companies -- that want to go over to green plastics,” Cohen says. “No one’s [gone] public yet, and it’s still in the research stage, but algae plastics and algae packaging are coming.”
The first step to any of this, though, is getting the algae oil. Companies such as Sapphire and Solazyme put the time horizon for their products at three to five years, but experts say it may be 10 years before the supply of algal oil is large enough to be felt in the market. Still, Solazyme’s biodiesel (Soladiesel) was tested in military trucks in April, and a Chicago chemistry teacher and his class of 140 students managed to produce enough algae biodiesel to drive a Volkswagen Vanagon to the Sears Tower from Al Raby School for Community and Environment on the West Side. And if a class of chemistry students can make it happen, then the rest of the world can’t be far behind.