Several years ago, I heard about the concept of growing algae as a crop for biofuels such as ethanol or biodiesel.  I was intriqued, but like many, I was skeptical of how much fuel could be derived from such a diminutive source. I felt sure that this was fresh-0ut-of-the-Petri-dish discovery, and would take decades to reach practical applications.

Well, as it turns out, the idea is already in beta.  Several companies have already developed prototype systems for raising and processing algae into biofuels.

You might now be saying, ‘That’s nice, but what’s so great about algae?’ Let’s start with what’s not so great about current biofuel sources.  Anyone who’s read the book, Omnivore’s Dilemma, is aware that modern corn and soybean crops require an exorbitant amount of petroleum-based fertilzer and pesticides, plus lakefuls of clean water to raise these hungry crops.  And of course, they need prime farmland, so crops grown for fuel are now competing with cropland producing food.  In some places, new farmland for fuelcrops is being created by burning down rainforests (aka the Earth’s lungs).  This may lead the European Union to step back from a sweeping commitment to biodiesel.

These problems are greatly reduced for several new systems which raise algae vertically in greenhouses with a closed-loop process that reuses its water, requires less energy, no fertilizers or pesticides, and is in season year-round. The systems can be located in desert regions, where food crop farming isn’t viable.

So algae has the game advantage of lower impact production, but its real trump card is the potential yield.  Vertically grown algae can yield 20 times the oil per acre of any current crop.  Half of the mass in an algae cell is lipid oil.  Most fuelcrops involve growing a plant just to harvest its seeds (corn kernels, soy beans, palm nuts). Raising algae skips that step, and still yields more oil than any seed.

There’s no algae-derived fuel on the market yet, but the science is sound enough that serious investors like Bill Gates are expecting a quick return on their investment in these little green wonders.