Obviously some new algaerhithms are needed

Blog 4 Truckers Editorial Staff

Four months ago, in December of last year, Blog4Truckers published an article about a promising alternative to conventional diesel fuel. This was algae, which we jokingly called “pond scum.” Though our piece had the typically playful tone that so delights B4T readers, we were serious about the subject. Scientists, universities, investors and the federal government have all devoted considerable time and money to investigating algae as a source of green fuel. Our conclusion was that while “algae-diesel” was still several years away, it boded to be the salvation of the transportation industry in an oil-starved future.

A New Use for Old Pixels

Alert reader G. W. Warburst begs to differ. Professor Warburst is the retired Chair of the Department of Rumination at the noted University of Oxcart in New South Wales. Though the professor read and replied to our piece the same day it appeared, we received his letter only recently.

A bit of explanation may be in order. Having left the campus town of Oxcart, Professor Warburst and his wife Adelaide moved to the retirement community of Drifty Dunes, located in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. For reasons he chooses not to disclose, the professor suspects both his email and conventional mail are monitored by the notorious ASP (Australian Secret Police), forcing him to deliver his communications through ingenious but round-about ways. In this case, he entrusted his reply to a sundowner family driving sheep to Melbourne, who in turn passed it on to… well, the point is that we got it only now.

“Dear Blithering Idiots,” began the professor with refreshing forthrightness. We read on eagerly, anticipating a spirited counter-argument to our column. We were not disappointed. (Although in our opinion the professor overstepped when he expressed regret that B4T was not a paper publication so that it could be put to use in his WC.)

Greenfuel’s Grim Fate

In short form, the professor’s thrust is that biofuels, algae in particular, will not deliver us from the impending global oil crisis. To quote:

“Did you drongos, in your fifteen minutes of research, bother to check out a company called Greenfuel Technologies? Have you even heard of it?”

Well, yes, as a matter of fact we have (though we haven’t heard of “drongos,” but more on that later). Greenfuel was spun off in 2001 from a project begun at MIT by a brilliant chemical engineer named Isaac Berzin. With funding of $70 million from private investors, his company built a state-of-the-art algae-to-diesel plant in Arizona. Hopes ran so high that in 2008, Time magazine listed Berzin as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Yet in 2009—only one year later—Greenfuel declared bankruptcy and its assets were auctioned off. (Needless to say, Berzin was dropped from that year’s “Influential 100” list.)

Alchemy Abracadabra

Returning to Professor Warburst’s letter, he writes: “Greenfuel had everything it takes to succeed: technology, brains, capital and vision. It just never had product. That is the problem with algae-based biofuel; it is an alchemical proposition: ‘Give us one thing and we’ll turn it into another thing.’ The pitch is the same; only the substances have changed. Pond scum can no more be profitably made into diesel than lead into gold. Algae-fuel is the fool’s gold of the gold rush for green energy. Greenfuel should have been more properly named ‘Greenfool.’”

The debatable word is in the professor’s stimulating critique is “profitably.” As he undoubtedly knows, changing lead into gold can only be done at the atomic level, still impossible even seventy years after splitting the atom. Turning algae into diesel is a chemical process, considerably simpler and already possible. All oil comes from living matter; even petroleum was once flora and fauna and (so to speak) dinosaura.

Of course, “possible” is not necessarily “profitable.” If it costs $100 to make a barrel of petro-oil and $200 to make a barrel of bio-oil, we’re no better off, except maybe environmentally. Unfortunately, in the real world economics trumps ecology every time. It may be true that oil is playing havoc with our air, water and climate, but if it was still cheap, the only incentive for green fuel would be to save the planet for posterity.

The Marxist View

That’s asking of a lot of a notably shortsighted species. Marx, with his usual pith, commented pointedly on the heedlessness of human nature when he asked, “What’s posterity ever done for me?” (A Night at the Opera, 1935). True, later he seemed to disavow this position when an observer praised his remark as pungent. “Gents don’t make puns,” he responded, “at least not in front of ladies” (ibid). However, as one of the two mothers claiming the same infant said of Solomon’s famous proposal, “Let’s not split heirs.”

But we’ll let Professor Warburst have the last word. “Greenfuel is not the only perpetrator of green folly. Recently, Lux Research, a company that advises investors on emerging technologies, published a report by analyst Andrew Soare, who specializes in the biofuel industry. He examined 24 algae fuel companies. Of these, he gave only three a positive rating. Soare found most of the others unable to fully back up claims with verifiable evidence. His conclusion? ‘A lot of these companies are going to fail.’

“Does this mean those businesses are run by crooks? Not at all. Most alchemists were honest men who truly believed in the ‘golden opportunity’ they offered to merchants and squires and princes. Algae-diesel may someday be economically competitive with petrodiesel, though not because its price has gone down but because oil’s has gone up. Which is exactly what oil will continue to do… until it’s all gone.”

The Fuel Fairy Will Not Come Tonight

Continues Professor Warburst, “Your peppy piece on algae fuel blithely blurs the number of years before it comes to market, if it ever comes to market. Don’t encourage people to believe in the Fuel Fairy, you nongo, unless you’re prepared to put a barrel of oil under everyone’s pillow.”

We had to look up “nongo,” but as we expected, like “drongo,” it was Australian slang for someone who doesn’t have all his oars in the wagon, or however that goes. (Australians seem to have a lot of words for stupid people, but that may be coincidence.)

We concede that we may have erred on the side of sunny optimism in algae’s pending potential…

Oh, all right. We were wrong. Happy now, Crocodile Warburst?

Right Idea, Wrong Pond

However, as a recent piece on the popular Public Radio series EarthSky, makes clear, there’s pond scum and then there’s pond scum. It seems that bioenergy prospectors may have been panning in the wrong pond all these years. We’ll examine the exciting prospects of cyanobacteria in GetLoaded, Part 2.

This story was drawn from articles in The New York Times, Ars Technica - Science News, EP: Environmental Protection Management and Blog4Truckers

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