Sapphire Energy Hikes Green Crude Production Estimates

[Update: This report was updated at 6:10 PT with a statement from Sapphire Energy president C.J. Warner]

Citing a breakthrough, San Diego’s Sapphire Energy, a startup developing algae-to-fuel technology, today doubled its estimated production for 2011, saying that by then the company will be capable of producing 1 million gallons of diesel and jet fuel annually.

“We have made a recent significant technological breakthrough within our company and, combined with our ongoing development improvements, we’re able to project a higher number,” said C.J. Warner, who was named Sapphire’s president in December. “This is pretty exciting for us and, given the urgency of finding a renewable fuel solution across the nation and around the globe, we wanted to share our updated time line.”  Warner, who provided the comment by email through a  spokeswoman, did not explain the nature of Sapphire’s breakthrough.

Sapphire says it has developed proprietary methods that enable algae growing in non-potable water in desert areas to produce a “green crude” substitute that requires no changes to the petrochemical industry’s pipeline and refining infrastructure.

In a statement released by Sapphire around a military energy and fuels conference in Alexandria, VA, Sapphire vice president Brian Goodall said the company’s technology is ready now. The company says production will ramp up over the next several years, hitting the 1 million gallon figure sometime in 2011, climbing to 100 million gallons annually by 2018, and then to 1 billion gallons of fuel per year by 2025. Sapphire says this means it could be supplying enough fuel to meet nearly 3 percent of the country’s 36 billion gallon renewable fuel standard.

In January, Sapphire participated in test flights that successfully substituted jet fuel made from its “green crude” for conventional jet fuel. Aviation fuel is viewed as a key market for the biofuels industry because the U.S. Air Force is the largest single customer, and the specifications are more rigorous than for any other transportation fuel. The company says it has conducted several test flights with commercial airlines Continental and JAL.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.