Green Ink: More on Cash for Clunkers, Clean Algae, and Nuclear Waste

Crude oil futures retreated to about $70 a barrel amidst the realization that oil demand has yet to recover, in Bloomberg.

The cash-for-clunkers program seems to have paid more environmental dividends than expected, which is mustering support from once-wary senators and could lead to the program’s renewal, in the WSJ. Similar programs are also working in Italy, France, and Spain, also in the WSJ.

Still, cash-for-clunkers can’t be considered green, argues a WaPo op-ed: The sheer energy cost of tearing up old cars and making new ones makes some greens wince. Jonah Goldberg hates it on economic grounds—it’s the parable of glaziers and the broken window, only it’s broken cars.

Before going on recess at the end of the week, the U.S. Senate has its hands full trying to reconcile competing interests on the energy and climate bill, in the WaPo. Among the big issues are emissions reductions targets, allocations, and the future of nuclear power, in Climate Wire.

Meeting those emissions targets will cost twice as much if nuclear power and clean coal aren’t part of the mix, argues a new report from the power industry, in the S.F. Chronicle.

Still, clean coal has its PR challenges: A coal group was behind the forged lobbying letters that created a firestorm last week, in Politico.

The WSJ edit page weighs in on the climate debate. First, American babies are not the problem, whatever Malthusian doomsayers might say. And China is an example of why less state intervention—not more—is actually good for the environment.

Algae could get a boost from a House bill giving it equal status with second-generation biofuels, including juicy tax credits, in Green Wire. But is algae fuel really any better for the environment than traditional fuels? It all depends on how the stuff is made—and since nobody is producing at scale, it’s too early to say, at Earth2Tech.

The FT’s Energy Source explains just why Britain better not bank on wind power as the source of green jobs—there just isn’t enough demand to support a single factory, let alone swarms of them.

Scientific American has a huge takeout on the problem of nuclear waste, exploring everything from other types of geological storage to reprocessing. The bottom line: Solving the waste question will be a lot easier when politicians get out of the way.

Finally, the Pentagon is mulling new procurement rules which could help turn green rhetoric into green reality, at TNR’s The Vine.

Algae Oil Lipid Trigger Breakthrough Sustainable Green Technologies Inc. Announces Innovative Way to Increase Algae Oil Production

Sustainable Green Technologies (SGT) a start-up company in Escondido, California announced today that it has discovered a highly effective and low cost way to massively increase algal oil production. Metabolic engineering research conducted at SGT over the past two years paid off when SGT scientists uncovered the elusive and long sought after “lipid trigger” in green algae.

Escondido, CA, August 04, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Sustainable Green Technologies (SGT) a start-up company in Escondido, California announced today that it has discovered a highly effective and low cost way to massively increase algal oil production. Metabolic engineering research conducted at SGT over the past two years paid off when SGT scientists uncovered the elusive and long sought after “lipid trigger” in green algae. Usually algae store excess harvested solar energy in the form of starch and in smaller amounts as lipid droplets within their cells. But under certain ideal conditions, many microalgae appear to flip a switch to turn on massive production and storage of oils instead of starch. The true nature of this metabolic switch as well as the conditions which activate (or trigger) the switch remained elusive. Now SGT is able to activate the switch at will and to create “obese algae.” This breakthrough technology supports the U.S. Advanced Energy Initiative - which seeks to diversify the U.S. energy portfolio and to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

“We uncovered the algae oil lipid trigger almost by accident,” notes Dr. Elmar Schmid, SGT’s CSO. "We were looking for new and rational uses of a waste stream from our biohydrogen technology. We found the waste from our biohydrogen system sparked tremendous growth of our green algae, and more importantly, massively increased lipid production and storage within our algae. In other words, our algae became obese within one week! We now have a highly efficient, cost-effective way of producing large amounts of algae oils for biodiesel fuel production. On top of that, we can produce clean biohydrogen from the resulting biodiesel refinery waste!” exclaims Dr. Schmid.

SGT’s biohydrogen technology was developed by researchers at SGT isolating and characterizing hydrogen-producing microbes, SGT’s microbes can convert a variety of feedstock into biohydrogen energy, for example glycerol waste from biodiesel production, sugars derived from sugar cane and sugar beet, office paper once it is turned into glucose by enzymes, and from brewery wastes just to name a few. The biohydrogen is used in a fuel cell to produce electricity. SGT has applied for a grant from the Department of Energy to further develop this Algae oil and biohydrogen energy system.

About Sustainable Green Technologies
Sustainable Green Technologies, a leader in biofuels and biohydrogen development based in Escondido, California manufactures and distributes bio-energy systems and technologies. For more information regarding SGT’s products and services, please contact Jim Siegrist, VP Marketing and Sales at 760-522-3087 and visit www.sustainablegreentechnologies.com.

Contact: Jim Siegrist
Cell: 760-522-3087
Email: jimsiegrist@hotmail.com
Web: sustainablegreentechnologies.com

ExxonMobil, DNA pioneer Hook Up To Cook Up Algae Biofuel

Add a top gun DNA scientist, an oil giant and algae and wadda get? A new process from genome scientist J. Craig Venter, funded by ExxonMobile to.

Remember the Exxon Valdez? The supertanker which broke up in 1989 off the Alaskan coast, spilling millions of crude into the pristine seas. It wasn't ail a waste, however, as thousands of marine creatures of many varieties were culled via suffocating, oil-soaked deaths. At the time, the Exxon suits offered up the head of the tanker's captain on a bed of 'my bads' with a side of' 'we;re doing all we can to clean it up' In the 20 years since the EV disaster, Exxon and the entire oil industry has done very little to clean up its act. Alberta Tar Sands anyone?

As oil prices continue to fluctuate like a hooker on a Navy base,Exxon/Mobile is sensing a sea change. Pond change, actually, as the oil conglomerate is wading into the pond scum business big time. Yep, green gold, ditch snot's looking to figure large in ExxonMobile's future. As reported at cleantech.com, Irving, Texas-based ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) plans to spend $600 million to develop biofuels from algae, including more than half to La Jolla, Calif.-based biotech firm Synthetic Genomics, founded by genome scientist J. Craig Venter.

The two companies plan to collaborate on research and development of algae-based fuels compatible with gasoline and diesel. If the alliance meets its technological milestones, Exxon expects to spend about $300 million on internal costs, with potentially more than $300 million going to Synthetic Genomics. First on the agenda is to build a test facility in San Diego, officials said. Exxon noted that years of research were ahead before a commercial product could be available.

ExxonMobil has spent more than $1.5 billion in the past five years on other renewable energy and efficiency projects. Those include technology to improve the efficient use of fuel in automobiles, such as tire liners that keep tires inflated longer, advanced engine oil, and lightweight automobile plastics. In the renewable sector, ExxonMobil has sponsored research in solar, biofuels, and carbon capture and storage, and an affiliate has developed a lithium battery separator film for hybrid electric cars Not everyone's buying into Exxon/Mobile's greenover, some seeing it as a necessary diversionary action while EM carries on its real love affair with, y'know,oil.

Among them, a block of the company's very own investors which continue to criticise it for not doing enough in the renewables sector. "The real challenge to creating a viable next generation biofuel is the ability to produce it in large volumes which will require significant advances in both science and engineering," said Venter, CEO of Synthetic Genomics, in a news release. "The alliance between SGI and ExxonMobil will bring together the complementary capabilities and expertise of both companies to develop innovative solutions that could lead to the large scale production of biofuel from algae."

This is the sort of high-minded approach we've come to expect from Ventner which, along with his task-specific technology, hands-on experience and international goodwill, are potent assets about to fall into the hands of a scary crew like ExxonMobile. It's to be hoped that Ventner and his visionaries can come up with a process generating enough juice to give ExxonMobile motivation to leave oil in its place. In the ground.

Bipartisan House Bill Would Include Algae in RFS

A bipartisan group of Western lawmakers has introduced legislation that would grant incentives to algae-based biofuels producers.

The bill, H.R. 3460 (pdf), sponsored by Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), would add algae-based fuels to cellulosic biofuels requirements in the national renewable fuel standard, or RFS.

Algae-based fuel producers have been lobbying for RFS recognition as they work to scale up their industry (Greenwire, April 28). It is possible that U.S. EPA could include the feedstock in its final rule for implementing the RFS this fall.

"Policymakers' inclusion of algae with other feedstocks is a really positive step," said Mary Rosenthal, executive director of the Algal Biomass Organization. "It's an additional endorsement that algae is a real feedstock for biofuels."

Advanced biofuels producers have been scaling up new technologies to meet the RFS, which calls for production and blending of up to 21 billion gallons of renewable fuels from non-food sources by 2022. But the algae industry has not reached commercial scale yet.

"This will encourage investors that there is a real industry here even before it is completely commercialized," Rosenthal said.

The new legislation would also establish a tax credit for algae-derived fuel producers. That part of the bill is similar to a measure introduced last session that would have extended renewable-energy tax credits to algae-based fuels. That legislation, H.R. 6943 (pdf), which was also sponsored by Bilbray, stalled in committee.

Riding a green tide: Matthew Goldstein

By Matthew Goldstein

NEW YORK (Reuters) - PetroAlgae (PALG.OB) is one of those many clean-tech companies that seem to burn through cash faster than a Hummer goes through a gallon of gas. Yet something curious is going on with shares of this Melbourne, Florida-based company, which is hoping to make money from turning algae into oil.

Over the past month, the stock price of PetroAlgae has rocketed from $8 to as high as $32.75 on ultra-thin trading of the shares (as of late Monday it had fallen back to around $10).

PetroAlgae boasts a rather healthy $1 billion market value -- after being as high as $3.4 billion earlier Monday -- even though it has no revenues, a $34 million accumulated deficit and its auditor isn't sure the company can continue as a going concern.

There may be a plausible explanation for PetroAlgae's surprising surge. Last month, Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) announced that it would spend $600 million to study the feasibility of algae-based fuels. There's no indication PetroAlgae will get any of those research dollars, but that's never stopped investors from wishing.

But the real winners here are David Grin and Eugene Grin, hedge fund managers who are longtime investors in cash-starved, small-cap companies. A group of funds managed by the brothers, including the $700 million Valens Capital Management series of hedge funds, effectively own a 96 percent equity stake in PetroAlgae.

The brothers Grin sank their teeth deep into PetroAlgae last December. In a series of transactions, a company controlled by Valens and the other funds paid $350,000 for 100 million shares of PetroAlgae, regulatory filings show. Then the Valens funds pumped an additional $10 million into PetroAlgae -- a cash infusion that accounted for nearly all the assets on the biotech company's balance sheet at the end of 2008.

Valens' investment in PetroAlgae represents nearly a quarter of the hedge funds' equity, say investors familiar with the fund. So the Valens funds, which were up a modest 4 percent in the first half of the year, should get a big bounce in July from the run-up in PetroAlgae shares.

Still, it's hard to see how Valens investors will ever truly profit from an Exxon-induced green wave of enthusiasm for algae-based fuels.

With the Grins' funds controlling all but a small sliver of PetroAlgae shares, the stock seldom trades. Any attempt by Valens and the other related hedge funds to try to take some profits by selling shares would quickly take the air out of this bubble.

And with PetroAlgae burning through $5.8 million in cash in the first quarter, about half the $10 million it received from Valens is gone. At the end of the first quarter, PetroAlgae reported having $5.6 million in assets. It had $11.6 million at the end of 2008.

So it's not clear what the Grins' longtime game plan is for this tiny cash-hungry company. An attorney for the hedge funds had little to say except to note that the Grins provide "shareholders and auditors with complete transparency and updates on the PetroAlgae investment."

Unless PetroAlgae can come to market soon with a viable technology for turning algae into fuel, it appears as if Valens investors may find themselves stranded on the rocks.