Mass. company making diesel with sun, water, CO2

Yahoo/AP ^ | 2-27-11 | JAY LINDSAY

[kingattax]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A Massachusetts biotechnology company says it can produce the fuel that runs Jaguars and jet engines using the same ingredients that make grass grow.

Joule Unlimited has invented a genetically-engineered organism that it says simply secretes diesel fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company says it can manipulate the organism to produce the renewable fuels on demand at unprecedented rates, and can do it in facilities large and small at costs comparable to the cheapest fossil fuels.

What can it mean? No less than "energy independence," Joule's web site tells the world, even if the world's not quite convinced.

[freekitty]

I would be very wary of companies that all of the sudden they claim to do this and that.

[ClearCase_guy]

I’ll believe it when I see it.

[Koblenz]

Well, either this means our reliance on foreign oil is over, or there's something factually incorrect with this article.

I'm betting on the latter, and so I am not going to run out and short Exxon Mobil.

[Steely Tom]

Sooner or later someone will figure out how to do this, and when that happens the economics of wind power will change for the better.

[lowbridge]

What can it mean? No less than "energy independence,

Not if government has its way.

[Melinda in TN]

If anybody figures out how to do this they need to hire the best bodyguards money can buy because there is way to much money to be made in the oil business for somebody to come along and make it obsolete.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

It's probably a scam, but if it's not the Left will shut it down so fast it will be like magic.

The LAST thing on earth they want is cheap, renewable energy, because that would annihilate their plans for totalitarian control.

[arrdon]

Sounds like SOMEONE ELSE who is going to have a new idea mysteriously disappear, never to be heard of again. Big oil just ain’t gonna’ stand fer it

1

[EGPWS]

[Frantzie]

Even if it works - the oil companies or govt will make them go away.

I can think of an area where this could be set up. Lots and lots of vacant land that no one wants as more and more dwellings get knocked down and bulldozed for more raw land.

Detroit.

[Cheetahcat]

Yeah what happens if this gets loose in the environment?

[YankeeReb]

If it's true and they can prove it, money will follow from investors willing to take a risk. I have no problem with a company doing this, in fact it's a great thing. Where the problem comes in is when some progressive starts throwing government money at it. Then it becomes a government boondoggle, you get government hacks involved who's job depends on working the problem, so the breakthrough never comes.

IMHO this is great but please above all else keep the government AWAY from it.

[richardtavor]

Please. The evil oil companies?

[dila813]

Oil is still up, they aren’t believed by wall street so you shouldn’t either.

[hinckley buzzard]

The only thing they need in order to get on with the revolution is a mere five hundred million or so from the Department of Energy to cover startup costs...

[prisoner6]

Sooo..H2O + CO2 + energy = ????

Whatever the molecular representation of diesel/ethanol is? Busted..no. Plausible...maybe.

We are awash in oil. Can it really all be from biomass? Could it be that ammonia and pressure and other contributions naturally create crude?

Isn't it possible that it is renewable?

Hope this story is true but color me skeptical.

[Huskrrrr]

They've received funding from “undisclosed institutional and private sources”. Makes me wary of their claims. Probably bailout funds with more to follow. I wish them success, but question their claims for efficiency. A large scale pilot plant will convince me.

[BRL]

Unfortunately, the oil companies , in cahoots with the Saudi government has already coordinated an alien space abduction on the inventor of this technology. After the aliens fry his brain, the CIA comes in and quietly destroys the evidence.

Same song, one thousandth verse.

[Repeal The 17th]

With the correct ratio of sun, water, CO2,
and tax-payer funded research grants and loan guarantees,
why, you can do ‘almost’ anything.