DOE Awards $9M for Algae Biotech Center

San Diego’s quest to become a hub for the development of algae-based biofuels got a boost today, with the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology (SD-CAB), saying it’s getting the lion’s share of a three-year, $9 million federal Department of Energy grant awarded today.

In addition to the $9 million in federal funds, a consortium of seven companies—including San Diego-based Sapphire Energy, General Atomics, and Sempra Energy—are providing $3 million to finance R&D slated to begin this summer. Funding for the consortium has been structured in a way that is similar to the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts (NAABB), which I profiled in May when Jose Olivares, the group’s executive director, came through San Diego. The San Diego-based consortium had also sought funding under the DOE program, and the funding announced today was in some respects a political consolation prize for the San Diego contingent.

About two-thirds of the cash will fund research underway at SD-CAB, which includes UC San Diego and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, according to Stephen Mayfield, a UCSD professor of biology who leads the San Diego algae biotech center. DOE funding also is going to UC Davis, the University of Nebraska, and Rutgers University to identify ways to protect algae crops, improve nutrient recycling, and for developing new genetic tools to improve algal fuel production.

Mayfield says protecting algal crops from predators ranks as one of the key problems that must be addressed as companies like Sapphire Energy move to commercialize methods of producing gasoline, jet fuels, and diesel from algae. “The reason it’s still basic research is because there is no one in the country who works on algal pathology,” says Mayfield, who also is a co-founder and scientific advisor at Sapphire. Algae fall prey to a variety of predators, Mayfield says, including primitive fungi known as chytrids, and microscopic filter feeders like rotofers and Daphnia (water fleas).

The announcement of the DOE award was made today by Cathy Zoi, the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Life Technologies, Chevron, Praxair, and W.R. Grace contributed part of the $3 million in financing, joined the industrial consortium of supporters, along with Sapphire Energy, General Atomics and Sempra Energy.

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.