The Definition of "Green Energy"

Anyone that owns a pool knows what algae is. It's that stuff along the bottom edges of the pool that turn the pool water that nasty green color. It's the enemy of the vacuum in the pool, a ladybug-shaped vacuum named "Shelly" in my case. But that algae may soon become your car's best friend. Why? Because algae is being explored as a new and more efficient biofuel.

A more well-known experiment like this is ethanol. But the drawbacks of ethanol have made it less than profitable. So has algae has come to take its place? Well according to a recent New York Times article, algae are attracting attention because the strains can potentially produce ten or more times more fuel per acre than the corn used to make ethanol or the soybeans used to make biodiesel. Moreover, algae might be grown on arid land and brackish water, so that fuel production would not compete with food production. And algae are voracious consumers of carbon dioxide, potentially helping to keep some of this greenhouse gas from contributing to global warming. Environmentally safe and even proactive in helping? Check. Economically efficient? Check. Doesn't affect crops and food production either? Checkity Check Check.

So what is the goal I hear you ask. Well also according to that article, various companies growing algae do have a goal: "The goal is nothing less than to create superalgae, highly efficient at converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into lipids and oils that can be sent to a refinery and made into diesel or jet fuel."

Mike Mendez, a co-founder and vice president for technology at Sapphire Energy, the owner of a laboratory has an ambitious goal: “My whole goal here at Sapphire is to domesticate algae, to make it a crop.”

After visiting Sapphire Energy's website, you can see they want to produce a drop-in replacement for transportation fuels that meet ASTM standards for gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. A.K.A. They want to see : 93, 89, 87, "Algae" at your gas pump.

So no worries with doing this? Nothing's perfect people. A worst-case hypothetical scenario discussed in the NYT article states, "that algae engineered to be extremely hardy might escape into the environment, displace other species and cause algae overgrowths that deprive waters of oxygen, killing fish." But these fears are lowered if not eliminated by various sources in the article. As an example, one said that any engineering they do to the algae actually makes it weaker.

Proof of growing interest: “There are probably well over 100 academic efforts to use genetic engineering to optimize biofuel production from algae,” said Matthew C. Posewitz, an assistant professor of chemistry at the Colorado School of Mines, who has written a review of the field. “There’s just intense interest globally.”

So you may still want to get rid of the algae in your pool, but do it with love because that green stuff could soon be the green stuff that limits our dependence on foreign oil. What a 180 that would be eh?