As oil prices escalate and supplies tighten, and as new technologies and old ones co-exist, the debate over the next generation of energy sources heats up.
The search is on for cheaper, more efficient fuels to run factories, power cars and keep lights burning. In every major capital of the world from Bruxelles to Washington to Tokyo, government and business leaders are trying to find ways to lessen or eliminate dependence on the ever more expensive oil.
On the west coast of the United States, Sapphire Energy is developing fuels from algae, a highly versatile plant that produces oily lipids which can be transformed and refined into high-octane gasoline and even jet-aircraft fuel using existing refining facilities.
Sapphire has developed a still undisclosed technology. They claim to make an oil substitute for EUR 40 a barrel, less than half the price of light, sweet crude right now on futures markets. The lead technology officer says that the raw ingredients for his bio-fuel come from photosynthetic microorganisms (algae), sunlight and carbon dioxide.
Granted, there are many hurdles—some of them quite high—that Sapphire has to clear to make this technology viable. Not least of them is how to scale up from a few greenhouses to the millions of acres of algae ponds that would be required to make even a modest dent on the world’s consumption of fossil fuel.
Still, there are ample reasons to investigate algae's potential. Unlike corn-based ethanol, which takes almost as much energy to make as it produces and does little to curb CO2 emissions, algae can be produced more efficiently and absorbs about as much carbon dioxide as it emits.