Algae have gotten short shrift in the decade or so since the Clinton administration axed its research funding at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. But could these tiny, ubiquitous plants, which come in a rainbow of colors and varieties, get us off of foreign oil some day?
“One of the big challenges — price, price, price,” said Michael Webber, a professor at the University of Texas. Right now, he said, algae could make fuel for around $10 a gallon, whereas the objective is to get the price down to $1.
The University of Texas is home to what is probably the world’s largest algae collection, with close to 3,000 different strains. Many are little green or red plumes in tubes; others sit in a liquid nitrogen deep-freeze — so cold that if you were to stick a finger in there for a few seconds, it might get lopped off if you banged it against something, according to Jerry Brand, the collection’s director.
Algae — whose predecessors helped make oil tens of millions of years ago — are already used in vitamins and other nutritional supplements. But the price is too high and the scale too small to meet the nation’s energy needs.
“The trick is to transform what we know about algae already into these better prices and larger scales for our energy. That’s just starting,” said Mr. Webber. Land- and water-use impacts will also require further study.
A number of start-ups are trying to commercialize algae for fuels, as my colleagues Clifford Krauss and Matthew Wald have reported.
Algae could be better positioned as a fuel than ethanol because their lifecycle carbon footprint — the energy and emissions required to grow them — seems likely to be lower, since algae grow so easily. Another advantage is that biodiesel derived from algae can usually be transported in pipes, unlike ethanol which often must be trucked.
Mr. Webber argued that Texas was well positioned to work on algae because it had three key ingredients in abundance: carbon-dioxide (Texas is the nation’s larger emitter — ironically an advantage here); sunlight; and brackish or saline water.
Algae biofuels plants could potentially be located near waste-water treatment facilities, cleaning up the wastewater while also providing fuel, said Mr. Webber.
The industry is still in the early stages, but interest is picking up. One sign of the times: the Department of Energy is hosting a workshop this week to discuss how to accelerate algae research.
Over the past three years the lifecycle of American biofuels has gone from birth to collapse, with the majority of public and private ethanol and biodiesel companies now in bankruptcy. The reason is simple. There is no there, there. So it doesn’t matter if we have 3rd, 4th, or 100th generation biofuels. Alchemy cannot transform the brief absorptioneaster-island-head-1 of sunlight in plantlife into any meaningful quantity of energy. If in some other physical universe, which we do not currently inhabit, it was possible to transform young organic material into liquids without the expenditure of additional energy, then in that world biofuels might look interesting. Until then, plants are not energy.
But enough about the science of biofuels and yesterday’s thoroughly depressing announcement from the Administration, to form an interagency task force with billions in new (plus bailout) investments in the sector. What’s more intriguing is to wonder why, after having completed a real-world test of the unsustainable biofuel business model–with its razor thin capital (and energy) profit margins–our society is going to bang its head against the same wall all over again. I mean really, why bother?
The answer may lie not in biofuels, but in oil. And, in our difficulty with large numbers. The energy content of young plantlife can be expressed in small numbers. But the energy content of oil is a large number. Modern society is so deeply inculcated and infused with oil that we are likely to project similar energy concentrations onto other energy sources. Oil towers over ethanol feedstocks, the way a skyscraper would shadow a house. A bushel of corn contains about 400,000 BTU. Thus, about 14 bushels are needed to match the 5.8 million BTU in a barrel of oil. But that’s over 800 pounds of corn. Moreover, oil is already in liquid form. Frankly, it makes more sense to burn corn in a furnace for heat, than to marshall an additional set of energy inputs to liquify it. And that’s exactly what many people do.
In this context, any renewed push by society to liquify plants starts to look ritualistic, not scientific. While the world remains quite rich in both gaseous and solid fossil fuels–natural gas and coal–the world is likely now in liquid energy decline. If that’s the case, let’s deal with it head on. Chasing the biofuel dream looks increasingly like a prayer. One wonders how people will think of us 100 years from now as we desperately run in silly circles, building monuments.
