When the organizers of the annual Algae Biomass Summit convene to begin planning for next year’s event, they might consider renaming it the Algae Biomass Smackdown.
It might be more accurate, considering the air of skepticism that seemed to pervade some of the sessions I attended during the three-day conference that was held last week in downtown San Diego. Bear in mind that in September 2008 we learned that Bill Gates’ investment arm, Kirkland, WA-based Cascade Investment, was participating in a $100 million secondary round of funding for San Diego’s Sapphire Energy. About 10 months later, ExxonMobil disclosed that it was investing $600 million to develop algae biofuels, including at least $300 million through a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, the algae biofuels startup founded by human genome pioneer J. Craig Venter.
To many observers, both of these announcements were indications that serious investors with the scientific resources to do serious due diligence had determined the credibility of algae biofuels technologies.
So it seemed like John Walter of San Antonio-based Valero Energy was going against the grain when he urged the algae industry to “get away from some of the outlandish claims that are out there.” He cited as an example startups’ claims that they can produce 1 million gallons of biofuel a year from 5 acres of algae. In his comments, which came during a panel discussion of “critical end-users,” the Valero executive also urged the algae industry to report actual “dry-weight yields per square meter” instead of estimating harvest yields in various ways. And he urged algae-based startups to make realistic estimates of how much capital will be required to reach pilot plant production levels of 1 million gallons a year.
“The money needed to get to the 1-million-gallons-a-year demonstration level is now orders of magnitude greater than what we heard in previous funding requests,” Walter said. (Sapphire Energy, by the way, said in April that it expected to be able to produce 1 million gallons a year of algae-based diesel and jet fuel by 2011.)
Events like this often include some outliers, a curmudgeon or two whose dyspeptic comments are highly quotable, but not necessarily realistic. But Walter’s views were echoed by other speakers at the summit, including Bill Barclay of Maryland-based Martek Biosciences, who said two-to-four-year timelines for algae biofuel production are “too optimistic.” Based on his experience in developing nutritional oils from algae, Barclay pronounced that algae-based biofuels are at least 10 years away.
Ultimately, algae-based feedstocks must compete with conventional petroleum crude on price. As Robert Rachor of FedEx told the audience, “If you guys are going to
