Posts Tagged by Solazyme
[The Vector] Biofuel Bounces Back
| December 8, 2010 | Posted by Aedan-Kernan under Biomass |
A trainload of biofuel in Sweden Source: Bjoertvedt, Creative Commons
In the US, the biofuel industry is undergoing something of a revival. Mothballed plants are reopening. Across the globe biofuel industry leaders are extremely bullish about their ability to bring down operating costs, to generate fuels from sources that don’t compete with food crops, and to design fuels for special purposes such as aviation. Will the industry live up to its promises the second time round?
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Biomass in the News
| October 19, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Biomass |
Stephen Lacey does a wonderful job in his podcasts for Renewable Energy World, and, I think, covers a multitude of subjects comprehensively and fairly. This week, he pointed out that feed-in tariffs (incentives for utility customers to put renewable energy back onto the grid) have been effective around the globe in spurring on the development of a great number of different technologies. He went on to note that biomass thermal is a viable, commercially ready technology, and deserves same set of incentives that are according to solar, wind, etc.
The federal government abandoned algae-based biofuels in the mid-1990s, but seems to have come around on the issue. The Department of Defense recently gave Solazyme several multi-million dollar contracts to supply jet fuel. Solazyme grows algae in the dark, feeding it with a variety of biomass stocks, and converting the sugars to oil.
The company claims that this process is 1000 times more efficient than growing algae in sunlight. But isn’t it hard to really fall in love with renewable energy technologies that wind up burning hydrocarbons? If we’re going to do this, isn’t it better to concentrate our efforts on technologies like solar, wind, geothermal, etc. that don’t involve carbon emissions? I really don’t see where the passion for biomass comes from.
