Blatant Reality

Seambiotic, and Israeli-based algae biofuel company, is going to be one of several companies featured on CNBC next week in a one hour show called “Beyond The Barrel: The Race To Fuel The Future.”

The amount of Israeli companies specializing in powering the future is too long to mention, more than one hundred were present in Eilat. But a few of the all-stars are setting new standards in solar, wind and bio-energy.

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Seambiotic is a firm started by a British born, former star attorney in Israel named Daniel Chinn. His company isn’t just on the road to making bio-diesel out of algae, they’ve also found a way to take the exhaust from pollution causing fossil fuel smokestacks at one of Israel’s biggest powerplants in Ashkelon, and make that pollution alternative.

Seambiotic takes the carbon dioxide waste, funnels it into algae pools causing the algae to grow faster and stronger. That carbon dioxide is one of the things allowing the company to harvest a new batch of algae every week while traditional corn based bio-fuels can only be harvested once or twice a year. Chinn says, “within five or ten years we will really be able to drive down the cost of algae based fuel, and that’s really the only thing stopping us right now.” This year Seambiotic is in the process of setting up one of the largest algae growing facilities in the world, in China.

The goal of this show is to highlight the “amazing race going on right now around the world to find the fuel of the future.”

Should be an interesting show so tune in to CNBC at 8pm ET on April 22 to check it out.

Over the summer, Exxon Mobil announced plans to invest $600 million in research and development of algae based biofuels, partially through a partnership with Synthetic Genomics. This past week, Exxon announced that the research had already begun and it was progressing at ‘full speed’.

Just six months after ExxonMobil agreed to invest US$600 million (Dh2.2 billion) in a six-year project to develop biofuel from microscopic plants, teams of researchers are performing their first experiments.

The project represents a radical departure for the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, which until last year had resisted calls from shareholders to embrace low-carbon energy.

But now the assembled biologists and chemists at ExxonMobil and its partner, Synthetic Genomics, are off to a raring start.

“We’re at full speed right now,” Dr Emil Jacobs, the vice president for research and development at ExxonMobil, said this week while attending the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. “The good news is we’re no longer writing agreements. We’re doing real work.

“I think we need a very aggressive programme and to advance this as fast as we can,” he said.

This is great news because it sends a positive signal to the algae biofuel industry that at least one major energy provider is willing to front major dollars towards research.

However, there is one thing that I found amusing in the article which dealt with where Exxon was looking to place the production fields. One region was the Gulf Coast area but the other wasn’t exactly home turf.

The principal environmental requirements are a warm, sunny location where the temperature fluctuates minimally. A source of carbon dioxide to enrich the algal growth medium is also needed, providing the option to site algal ponds or bio-reactors next to power plants or other large industrial installations equipped with carbon-capture technology. The US Gulf Coast is a prime candidate for algal biofuel projects. Locations along the Arabian Gulf coast are also appealing.

“The Middle East would be an option that would certainly be on our shortlist,” Dr Jacobs said.

Yep, they are also looking to place production in the Middle East. Given, the climate would be suitable but one of the great things about algae is that it could offer the United States the option to produce a lot of our fuel within our own borders, helping to increase our energy security.

How ironic would it be if we ended our reliance on petroleum from the Middle East only to start importing algae biofuel produced in the very same region? The energy security issues would theoretically be the same with instability in the region potentially sending prices soaring. Just change OPEC to OAEC and we could have the very same problems in the future as we have today.

The good news is that Exxon first has to research and develop a successful way to commercially produce algae biofuels before we will have to worry where our algae biofuel originates. By the time that happens, this issue could be moot.

Riggs Eckelberry, the CEO of OriginOil, will be addressing the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization (IREO) Renewable Energy Conference this Thursday, June 11th. The Conference will cover biofuels and their feasibility.

During the 3:45 session entitled, “Future of Renewable Energy,” Eckelberry will discuss the viability of biofuels and progress that his company, OriginOil, has made within that field. Moderated by Dr. Carl Liggio, formerly of US Power Generating Company, the event will also feature key speakers that include Dr. Arthur Nozik of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Ron Smith of Verdant Power, HRH Prince Malik ado Ibrahim of Nigeria, and Dr. Daniel Nocera of MIT, among many others.

 

“We are honored to welcome OriginOil to our inaugural ‘meeting of the minds,’” said IREO Secretary-General Robson Mello. “Riggs Eckelberry and his team have been instrumental to the development of this conference, and having their full support behind our event has been a large part of its success.”

 

“The focus of today’s world economies is on job creation, and the biofuels category offers the greatest new jobs potential of any energy source today,” said Riggs Eckelberry, CEO of OriginOil. “We will demonstrate how sustainable biofuels production can roll out quickly to offer massive job creation and provide an answer to the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.”

 

As the foremost international voice on Renewable Energy worldwide, IREO has established this annual conference to bring together leaders from political, private and academic sectors to discuss the state of renewable energy needs and plausible solutions in response to the growth of developing nations around the world. The conference will precede the 2nd Annual IREO Renewable Energy Awards Gala, beginning that evening at 6pm.

If you want to attend, you still can sign up here.

A new 6m euro project in Scotland called BioMara has been launched to find the best kind of algae to derive biofuels. Compared to a lot of their American counterparts, this project will focus both on single cell algae (microalgae) along with seaweed (macroalgae). Here is what one researcher has to say about the project:

 “We do not know which strains are the most suitable to grow and convert, or the best cultivation conditions at large scales. We will therefore initially focus on creating new knowledge that should raise the efficiency of existing technologies as well as developing novel technologies. BioMara will further investigate process controls, engineering needs, supply chain issues and the social and economic impacts of algal biofuels,” says Stanley.

Algae is once againg makings its way into the headlines with a Japanese airline looking to be the fourth airline to use biofuels in a test flight tomorrow. However, the most interesting tidbit in this article is the claim that an algae farm the size of Belgium would produce enough fuel to power all commercial airlines worldwide.
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P.S. For those of you who aren’t near a map, Belgium is quite a small country.
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Click here for story

The European Union gave a Scottish led project roughly $7.5 million to study the feasibility of marine biomas being converted into fuel. This “marine biomas would, of course, include algae.
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More here

New Zealand’s very own Aquaflow just announced that is has achieved several important milestones in creating ‘green crude’, their version of algae-based biofuel.
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Click here fr whole story

I almost forgot the today was in fact the fifth of November and while I was mourning last night’s results, the UK is celebrating Guy Fawkes Night. In honor of this most auspicious of nights, remember this poem:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I can think of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

 

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Several days ago, I had a post that pointed out an ad campaign basically predicting a horrible future if Republicans were elected this November 4th. The thing about this ad that really got me was that instead of just being a simple “Vote Democrat or Else” ad, its message was “Vote for Obama who will be our savior from this almost certain horrible future.”

Anyways, I was curious to see who did this website since it seemed to be fairly sophisticated and I was surprised to find that the website is linked to a Filip Hammarstrom from Sweden. One can easily find this sort of information out using the free services like Domain Tools “WhoIs Search”.

A simple Google search of his name pops up one of Sweden’s largest production companies, Palladium, which has a Filip Hamarstrom is listed as a “Director & Editor” in the Contact page. This priduction company has done multiple videos for various different companies and organizations including the UN.

Now, could it be chance that the Filip who has registered the site has the same name of the Filip who works at Palladium? Sure, weirder things have happened. But with the professional quality of the videos at The Year 2048, one would think a production company, or at least someone familiar with these sorts of things, was involved. Plus, if you look at the address given from the WhoIs Search and compare it to the address of Palladium, you find that it is just a 15 minute drive.

Why is this all important? Well it just shows that foreign nationals are trying very hard to influence our election. I wasn’t able to find anything that directly associated these ads with the Obama campaign but if anyone else can find a connection, be sure to link to it in the comment section.

Seems like Obama doesn’t want to take a position on the bombing of an al Qaeda agent in Syria. Going off his previous statements of supporting taking out targets in Pakistan, it should seem like he would support this recent action. Of course, with a week before the election, we aren’t going to see him take a potentially controversial stand.
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The Weekly Standard has more on this here.