Eighty miles west of El Paso, Texas, in a sunburnt stretch of the New Mexico desert, Predator drones and blimps patrol the nearby border and immigration-agency SUVs speed through the desolate terrain, the occasional coyote loping across the scrub. Oddly, given that I’m more than 600 miles from the Pacific, there’s a distinct salty ocean tang wafting on the breeze. But that’s not the sea I’m smelling: The odour is emanating from algae growing in 30 acres of huge oblong ponds at Sapphire Energy’s Green Crude Farm.
Funded with $85 million from Bill Gates and other investors—plus $104 million in government cash and loan guarantees—the world’s only com- mercial outdoor algal biorefinery went online this summer and will eventually expand to 300 acres. The plan: Extract 1.5 million gallons of green crude oil a year from patented pond scum fed a diet of carbon dioxide and sunlight.
Even before San Diego-based Sapphire broke ground on the demonstration plant last year, the US Navy’s green energy warrior, Vice Admiral Philip Cullom, descended on the desert site to grill Sapphire execs on their technology and its potential to fuel battleships and jet fighters. “No question, the military has focussed the company and given us a great challenge to meet,” says Sapphire executive Tim Zenk, standing on the catwalk of a tank.
Scum ponds in the desert? The very idea conjures memories of the federal government’s decidedly mixed record at promoting alt-energy projects: Solyndra, FutureGen, A123’s electric-car batteries, synfuels in the 1980s, jojoba in the 1970s. Add to that all the many military boondoggles—Star Wars missile defence, for one—born of best intentions and bloated budgets.
In July, off the coast of Hawaii, the Navy floated its intentions with the launch of the Great Green Fleet, the first Navy strike force powered by a 50-50 blend of standard aviation fuel and a mixture of algae and used cooking oil. Some 450,000 gallons of that biofuel, produced by Solazyme and Dynamic Fuels, powered the F/A-18 fighter jets screaming through the skies, the E-2C Hawkeyes patrolling the surrounding airspace and the Seahawk helicopters ferrying Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and top Navy brass between two destroyers and a guided missile cruiser steaming alongside the nuclear-powered USS Nimitz.
(This story appears in the 26 October, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
Nice info.
on Oct 20, 2012Good article.
on Oct 20, 2012