A San Diego company said Wednesday that it could turn algae into oil, producing a green-colored crude yielding ultra-clean versions of gasoline and diesel without the downsides of biofuel production.

The year-old company, called Sapphire Energy, uses algae, sunlight, carbon dioxide and non-potable water to make "green crude" that it contends is chemically equivalent to the light, sweet crude oil that has been fetching more than $130 a barrel in New York futures trading.

The basic idea isn't new, and has been attracting investment dollars at a healthy clip. Like other biofuels, "oilgae" is appealing because it uses carbon dioxide as an input, giving it the potential to be close to carbon-neutral (although Sapphire wouldn't release detailed information on the carbon impact of the process). Unlike other biofuels, though, this wouldn't displace huge swathes of cropland--the yield per acre is on the order of 200 times that of corn ethanol. It's still in the early stages, and cost competitiveness has been an issue in the past when oil was cheaper, but the fact that it can be used without replacing refineries or cars seems like a good sign.

--Josh Patashnik

Posted 3:7 PM | Comments
THE NEW REPUBLIC | Blogs

No, can not use it. This would create a water shortage.
Energy companies will have to be protected from lawsuits to find alternative fuels that make sense. otherwise, greedy environmentalists will keep creating problems to their benefit.

__________________
Victory in Iraq

Why don't you just have in your signiture the following:

The Environment is Evil

All Government, except the glorious military, which is super duper good, is bad. We don't need government, except for military

All taxes hurt economic growth--we can borrow all we need to run said military

Blacks are racists and whites are victims. Such good victims in fact that we don't even cry about it, except when we are pointing out racism against blacks, which is way overblown

War is good, peace is stupid

Yep, green goo could become a viable alternative.

I saw something about this company the other day. I believe they are actually running their vehicles on it currently...

A whole new meaning for scum! (there's hope for you yet wow)

Let's see, oil comes from algae that grew in the oceans.
Algae oil would also grow well in the oceans.
Mars lost its oceans due to global warming.
You are correct, algae oil doesn't solve the problem of no oil on Mars.

On earth, however, what's the figure, 80% of the world's surface area is covered by oceans, so growing algae in the middle of the tropical Pacific in international waters would turn relatively unproduction regions of the planet into productive territory.

You can continue to live on Mars, but the rest of us are down to earth focused on the problems at hand here on earth.

And unless you are a citizen of Mars, you are the classic conservative who thinks you have the right to dictate to other people, in this case the Martians, what they can or can't do.

Another algae biofuel startup, Solazyme, was featured on the NewsHour last Thursday: Online NewsHour: Report | Investing in Green Business | May 29, 2008 | PBS