Cleantech Update

"Algae Will Be Local": OriginOil CEO to Speak at Algae World Summit in San Diego - Riggs Eckelberry will speak on decentralization of energy production through algae - Los Angeles, CA March 9, 2010 – OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, has announced that the company’s president and CEO, Riggs Eckelberry, will join a distinguished panel of speakers to kick off the Algae World Summit in San Diego, California, on May 18, 2010. In keeping with the industry’s push to achieve commercial scale, this year’s Summit will focus on the critical phase “From Lab to Scale Up” and will push for collaboration between the many players in algae at all levels. In the discussion, Eckelberry will build on his theme “Algae Will Be Local”. His argument is that industrialized algae requires industrial quantities of CO2. Because CO2 is too expensive to transport...

There has been a resurgence of investment interest in the U.S. biofuel industry focused on technologies that use algae to make fuel. The appeal of algae is that it can potentially produce fuel without diverting food crops or large swathes of land. Ethanol derived from corn has been blamed by some for driving up food prices, while large-scale production of cellulosic ethanol would require cultivation of plants such as switchgrass that are grown only in small amounts now. When exposed to light and carbon-dioxide, pools of algae produce lipids that can be refined into oil. The algae consumes the carbon-dioxide during the process, scoring a double hit for protecting the environment. Drawn by that potential, Exxon Mobil Corp. in July announced it was investing $600 million in a partnership with Synthetic Genomics Inc. of La Jolla, Calif., to develop commercially viable biofuels from algae. That followed an announcement by Dow Chemical Co. in June that it was teaming up with Algenol Bi...