Biofuel is going to happen, fossil fuel is simply biofuel from the annals of time. The beauty of biofuel is it is a drop-in replacement for Jet A, and it has a bright future for that reason. The problem is paying for the heavy infrastructure development it takes to produce it
en masse- huge obstacle there. Taxpayers do not want to fund it, but the current fuel market will not pay $30+ a gallon for it either. My readings tell me algae is the way to go although the industry may try other avenues especially in third world countries. Like wind, coal, nuclear, natural gas, etc. it may take decades to grab a large share of the transportation fuel market.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oil Scare Turns FedEx On To Energy Efficiency
(J. Ydstie, NPR, 4/1/12) The rising cost of oil isn't just a hit to the family budget. Businesses are hurt, too. Few are more affected than firms like FedEx. It deploys nearly 700 planes and tens of thousands of trucks and vans every day to deliver packages around the world. And few business leaders are more focused on finding alternatives to petroleum-based fuels than FedEx CEO Fred Smith. Shortly after Smith founded Federal Express, the 1973 Arab oil embargo almost killed it. The experience imprinted Smith with a keen interest in the price and availability of oil. "That would be an understatement," Smith laughs. "For sure." FedEx now burns 1.5 billion gallons a year of petroleum-based fuels, and, once again, the potential for conflict in the Middle East, specifically with Iran, has boosted prices and raised fears of a supply disruption. Smith says keeping the supply of imported oil flowing has cost the U.S. dearly over the past 40 years. "We spend about $70 [billion] to $80 billion a year as a country doing that, not just for ourselves, but for the rest of the world as a whole," Smith says. "And that's even before we get to the $1.3 trillion we've spent on Afghanistan and Iraq, and as Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said pretty plainly, 'Iraq was about oil.' Not totally, but ... so these are very big issues."
Sapphire Energy Announces $144 Million Funding
(A.M. Edwards, 04/02/12,
DomesticFuel) San Diego-based biofuel developer Sapphire Energy, Inc. has secured the final installment of $144 million in a Series C round of venture funding that includes Arrowpoint Partners, Monsanto, and other undisclosed investors. This round of funding is being used to directly support Sapphire’s active and on-schedule commercial demonstration of an algae-based biofuels facility in Luna County, New Mexico. The Green Crude Farm, also known as the Integrated Algal BioRefinery (IABR), is the world’s first commercial demonstration scale algae-to-energy facility, integrating the entire value chain of algae-based fuel, from cultivation to production to extraction of ready-to-refine Green Crude. With this latest investment round, Sapphire Energy’s total funding from private and public sources substantially exceeds $300 million. This announcement follows several recent partnerships and deals supporting Sapphire Energy’s continued expansion in Green Crude production. Last month, Sapphire announced it will integrate Earthrise Nutritionals’ spirulina strain into its growing inventory of cyanobacteria and algae strains to expand resources for algae-to-energy production. In May 2011, Sapphire announced a multi-year agreement with The Linde Group to co-develop a low-cost system to deliver CO2 to commercial-scale, open-pond, algae-to-fuel cultivation systems, now underway at the Green Crude Farm. In March 2011, Sapphire and Monsanto entered into a multi-year collaboration on algae-based research projects. Sapphire also was awarded a $50 million grant from the Department of Energy and a $54.4 million dollar loan guarantee from the Department of Agriculture, providing security for a privately funded loan...