Alternative Energy Fuels

"Green oil:" scientists can make oil from algae, but can they also make money by making oil from algae?

Image: Photograph courtesy of Sapphire Energy

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As oil prices escalate and supplies tighten, and as new technologies vie with old ones (and with special-interest groups), the debate over the next generation of energy sources reminds me of the birth of an earlier energy source: steam.

Most people think the steam engine—that paragon of the Industrial Revolution—was invented in the 18th century, maybe even later. That would be wrong.

The first steam engine was actually invented in ancient Rome in about A.D. 60. The inventor was a Greek mathematician living in Alexandria, Egypt, named Hero. He also invented a windmill and a water-pressure device that could open and close doors.

No one knows if Hero suggested any practical use for his simple engine, such as mounting it on a ship. Yet one wonders how the Roman authorities of his day would have responded to the contraption, which would have challenged what was then the main source of locomotion for ships, besides wind: slaves and oars.

Nearly 17 centuries later, in 1710, an Englishman named Thomas Newcomen built a working steam engine. This time, the invention stuck and the British embraced it, creating the modern industrial world.

The question today, when it comes to alternative fuel technologies is: Will we be like the Romans, or the British?

This was essentially the question asked a few days ago in a testimony to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources by Jason Pyle, C.E.O. of Sapphire Energy, a leader among "next-generation" bio-fuels companies ("first generation" bio-fuels being ethanol and biodeisel made mostly from corn).

At its headquarters in San Diego, Sapphire Energy is developing fuels from algae, a highly versatile plant that produces oily lipids that can be transformed and refined into high-octane gasoline and even jet-aircraft fuel using existing refining facilities.

Sapphire has developed a still-undisclosed technology it says can make an oil substitute for $60 a barrel, less than half the price of light, sweet crude right now on futures markets. Pyle says that the raw ingredients for his bio-fuel come from photosynthetic microorganisms (algae), sunlight and carbon dioxide.

“They are carbon neutral and renewable,” Pyle said of his fuel, “and don’t require any food crop or agricultural land.”

Granted, there are many hurdles—some of them quite high—that Sapphire has to clear to make this technology viable. Not least of them is how to scale up from a few greenhouses to the millions of acres of algae ponds that would be required to make even a modest dent on the world’s consumption of fossil fuel.

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