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<p class=MsoPlainText><b><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-weight:bold'>UK announces world's largest algal
biofuel project Carbon Trust launches £26m project to develop transport fuels
made from algae by 2020 Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday October 23 2008 <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The world's biggest publicly funded project to make
transport fuels from algae will be launched today by a government agency which
develops low-carbon technologies.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The Carbon Trust will today announce a project to make
algal biofuels a commercial reality by 2020. The plan could see up to £26m
spent on developing the technology and infrastructure to ensure that algal
biofuels replace a signficant proportion of the fossil fuels used by <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place>
drivers.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Mark Williamson, innovations director at the Carbon
Trust, said: "We must find a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to
oil for our cars and planes if we are to deliver the deep cuts in carbon
emissions necessary to tackle climate change. Algae could provide a significant
part of the answer and represents a multibillion-pound opportunity."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Transport accounts for one-quarter of the <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place>'s
carbon emissions and is the fastest growing sector. Finding carbon-neutral
fuels will be crucial to the government meeting its target to reduce overall
emissions by 80% by 2050. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>A recent review by the chairman of the Renewable Fuels
Agency, Ed Gallagher, identified algae as a potential way to generate
sustainable biofuels. Biofuels made from food crops have been blamed for rising
food prices.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Algae produce a range of chemicals depending on their
species and the environmental conditions in which they grow. View how the
process works here. Scientists hope to find strains that can produce oils that
could be used to make fuel for cars, as a replacement for petrol and diesel.
Once identified, these algae could be grown in large amounts and processed to
extract the useful oils.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>John Loughhead, executive director of the UK Energy
Research Council, said: "Algae are potentially attractive means to harvest
solar energy: they reproduce themselves, so there's no manufacturing cost for
the solar converter, they can live in areas not useful for food or similar
productive use, they don't need clean or even fresh water so don't add to
global water stress, and can give oils, biomass, or even hydrogen as a product.
Perhaps they'll be the stem cells of the energy world."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The Carbon Trust forecasts that algae-based biofuels
could replace more than 70 billion litres of fossil fuels used every year
around the world in road transport and aviation by 2030, equivalent to 12% of
annual global jet fuel consumption or 6% of road transport diesel. In carbon
terms, this equates to an annual saving of more than 160m tonnes of CO2
globally with a market value of more than £15bn.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>For the first stage of the project, the Carbon Trust
will spend up to £6m in a range of British companies involved in promising
algae research. "You can make algae with a very high oil content and you
can make algae that grows very quickly and, at the moment, no one can do
both," said Robert Trezona, R&D director at the Carbon Trust. Other
problems include the best design of mass-culture systems.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>John Benneman, a consultant on algae who has worked
with the US Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency, said that
it would take a multitude of approaches to fully realise the potential of
algae. "There are many more different algae species than there are higher
plant species so each algae will require specific effort. Each one will have
its own peculiar requirements to figure out how to make them productive, how to
get the right strains, how to harvest and process them. We cannot just depend
on one or two companies."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The second phase of the project will start in around a
year and involves scaling up the algae-growing operation. The Carbon Trust will
build multi-hectare open ponds to act as laboratories for the most promising
algae technologies identified in the early stages of the challenge. Due to the <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place>'s
gloomy weather, these will most likely be built abroad. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>"If you I've got 12 months a year of warmth and
sunshine, your algae farm just produces much more biomass. In a world where
costs will be important, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place>
algae farms would have a real problem," said Trezona. This phase of the
project could see the Carbon Trust, and interested partners from industry,
investing up to £20m.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Loughhead welcomed the Carbon Trust project. "The
critical aspect is that algae convert the energy of sunlight and the efficiency
with which they do that determines the economic viability of the whole approach
as sunlight is unhelpfully low in energy density. Hopefully this Carbon Trust
scheme will help gather information on how well that can be done now, and start
the scientific development to improve it for the future."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>There have been major efforts in the past to develop
biofuels from algae. Multimillion-dollar programmes funded by the <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region></st1:place>
government in the 1980s found that high biomass yields were possible but
research ended when no one found a way to make it commercially competitive with
the low oil prices of that era. Work in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Japan</st1:country-region></st1:place> also faltered when
researchers were unable to scale up the growth of algae in photobioreactors,
closed vessels that provide plenty of light and conditions that could
intensively grow the microorganisms. To date, no one has designed a system that
has made it to market.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>But the Carbon Trust believes that interest in algae
has been renewed, thanks to the recent increases in oil prices and public
awareness of climate change. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Transport minister Andrew Adonis said: "This
project demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that second generation biofuels
are truly sustainable — and will further our understanding of the
potential for microalgae to be refined for use in renewable transport fuel
development, to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Several companies around the world are already
involved in making fuels from algae, with one of the most prominent the San
Diego-based company Sapphire Energy. Sapphire plans to use genetically modified
algae to produce a chemical mixture from which it is possible to extract what
it calls "green crude". Their idea is to refine this mixture into
fuel for cars and airplanes. Investors include the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place>'s Wellcome Trust and the company
has so far raised $100m to develop its ideas. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Loughhead added that another potential benefit of
algae is its ability to remove CO2 from the air. "Although here they will
re-emit it when used as fuels, there is the possibility that they could
ultimately be used as a means of cleaning the atmosphere — if we can find
a way of converting the algae to a safely storable form after they've grown."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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