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In pursuing cleaner energy there is such a thing as being too green. Unicellular microalgae, for instance, can be considered too green. In a paper in a special energy issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley describe a method for using microalgae for making biofuel. The researchers explain a way to genetically modify the tiny organisms, so as to minimize the number of chlorophyll molecules needed to harvest light without compromising the photosynthesis process in the cells. With this modification, instead of making more sugar molecules, the microalgae could be...

Green-colored polar bears are drawing questions from puzzled visitors at a Japanese zoo. Three normally white polar bears at Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in central Japan changed their color in July after swimming in a pond with an overgrowth of algae. ... High temperatures in July and August and less-frequent water changes because of the zoo's conservation efforts caused an algae growth in the bear pond and safety moat, Kurobe said.

Oil prices recently hit $140 per barrel. The cost to grow and transport food is rising in tandem, and the global economy is being squeezed. Meanwhile pollution from burning fossil fuels continues to pollute the planet. The world needs an abundant source of clean, transportable, inexpensive fuel. Could microscopic algae hold a key to that future? There has been a lot of hype surrounding oil production from algae lately. Visionaries claim algae holds the key to energy independence, but as exciting as oil produced from algae is, the reality is that a fossil-fuel-free economy is probably farther off than many...

Remember the optimist's creed, "If life gives you lemons, make them into lemonade"? Well, ConocoPhillips and the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels are trying to do one better in a new, $5 million research partnership: "If life gives you pond scum, turn it into alternative fuels. And while you're at it, fight global warming." OK, trying to cram two good ideas into one slogan may make it too long for bumper stickers. But it is a classic example of the creative thinking that promises to reshape Colorado's future while creating jobs in the new energy economy. Making fuels from...

The two plan to develop algae strains that can be economically harvested and processed into finished transportation fuels. San Ramon, Calif.-based oil giant Chevron (NYSE: CVX) said it signed an agreement to work with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory to produce transportation fuels using algae. Chevron said its Chevron Technology Ventures unit will fund the initiative but did not disclose the amount of the financing. The company said it would collaborate with NREL scientists to identify and develop algae strains that can be economically harvested and processed into finished transportation fuels such as jet fuel. "NREL...

SHELL is to become the first major oil company to produce diesel fuel from marine algae. Algae are a climate-friendly way to make fuel from carbon dioxide. They produce an oil that can readily be converted to diesel, and can be fed CO2 directly from smokestacks. Unlike biofuels such as corn, they don't use up soil or water that could otherwise be used to grow food, which can pump up food prices. The US government abandoned research on algal biofuel in the 1990s because of the low cost of crude oil. But as oil and food prices began to rise,...

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The 16 big flasks of bubbling bright green liquids in Roger Ruan's lab at the University of Minnesota are part of a new boom in renewable energy research. Driven by renewed investment as oil prices push $100 a barrel, Ruan and scores of scientists around the world are racing to turn algae into a commercially viable energy source. Some varieties of algae are as much as 50 percent oil, and that oil can be converted into biodiesel or jet fuel. The biggest challenge is slashing the cost of production, which by one Defense Department estimate is...

ANTHONY — A year ago, this dusty patch of land near the New Mexico border contained little more than dirt and the odd sprig of alfalfa. Today, it is home to a $3 million laboratory that is crackling with activity. The hi-tech lab was built for a peculiar but possibly revolutionary purpose: to explore ways algae can be used to reduce the world's dependence on oil. An arid stretch of West Texas might seem like a strange place to study the tiny water-borne plants, but the work is more than just a big idea. The two companies behind it, El...

Icky algae alarms New England fishermen By LISA RATHKE, Associated Press Writer Aug 26, 2007 STOCKBRIDGE, Vt. - It looks like a clump of soiled sheep's wool, a cottony green or white mass that's turning up on rocks and river bottoms, snarling waterways. Already a scourge in New Zealand and parts of the American South and West, the aquatic algae called "rock snot" is creeping into New England, where it is turning up in pristine rivers and alarming fishermen and wildlife biologists. "It scares me," said Lawton Weber, a fly fishing guide, who first spotted it on the Connecticut River...

In "The Controlled Eutrophication process: Using Microalgae for CO2 Utilization and Agircultural Fertilizer Recycling"3, the authors estimated a cost per hectare of $40,000 for algal ponds. In their model, the algal ponds would be built around the Salton Sea (in the Sonora desert) feeding off of the agircultural waste streams that normally pollute the Salton Sea with over 10,000 tons of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers each year. The estimate is based on fairly large ponds, 8 hectares in size each. To be conservative (since their estimate is fairly optimistic), we'll arbitrarily increase the cost per hectare by 100% as a...

Diesel engines can run on just about anything, including used cooking oil. An entire industry is emerging to provide brave 'biodiesel' pioneers with the ingredients for petroleum-free motoring. One day last March, my musician friend Jonathan drove up in a Mercedes. This was odd, since Jonathan is so resolutely counterculture that he once tried recording an album in the woods, without electricity. His car's exhaust smelled faintly of french fries, and therein lay the explanation: The new Jonathan Richman tour vehicle -- an '84 300D Turbo -- was running on vegetable oil-derived biodiesel fuel as he and his drummer crisscrossed...

Most would agree, the days of cheap oil are gone. Burgeoning economies in China and India, instability in oil-producing regions, and refineries running at capacity, exacerbate already tight crude supplies. This confluence of events has forced major oilconsuming nations to take a more serious look at alternative fuels. In the U.S., ethanol from corn has helped cut dependence on foreign oil. The U.S. in 2004 produced about 3.4 billion gallons of ethanol , equivalent to roughly 2% of annual gasoline consumption. Europe, on the other hand, has seen a decline in gasoline consumption, along with a commensurate rise in demand...

It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. {snip} So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 I warned, on these pages, that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead...

SAN FRANCISCO, April 23 — A New Zealand company said Monday that it had secured financing from an investor in Silicon Valley to produce ethanol from an untapped source — carbon monoxide gas. The company, LanzaTech, based in Auckland, said it had developed a fermentation process in which bacteria consume carbon monoxide and produce ethanol. Ethanol can be used as an alternative fuel or an octane-boosting, pollution-reducing additive to gasoline. Sean Simpson, LanzaTech’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, said the company would use the $3.5 million investment from the venture firm, Khosla Ventures, to establish a pilot plant and perform...

Pioneered by bearded hippies running clapped-out vans on recycled chip fat, biofuels now mean big business, sold to us as a solution to global warming. We must not be fooled, argues Mark Lynas Late every summer, large areas of central Borneo become invisible. There's no magic involved - most of the densely forested island simply gets covered with a pall of thick smoke. Huge areas of forest burn, while beneath the ground peat many metres thick smoulders on for months. These trees are burning in a good cause, however. They are burning to help save the world from global warming....

About a year ago, Paul McNees chose to change his life by changing his fuel. ... "I just couldn't justify filling up that tank with gasoline anymore for a multitude of reasons," said McNees, 43, citing global warming and the war in Iraq. "This has been great. It's totally cleaned out the engine. It runs great, has a lot more power. It sort of smells like french fries -- it doesn't have that noxious diesel smell." ... Nationally, biodiesel consumption is up sharply -- from 500,000 gallons in 1999 to more than 75 million gallons in 2005. In the Bay...

EW YORK (Reuters) - When railroads ruled, it was the sweating firemen shoveling coal into the furnace who kept the engines running. Now, nearly two centuries after Stephenson's "Rocket" steam locomotive helped usher in the Industrial Revolution, that same coal could be the fuel that keeps the jet age aloft. But with a twist: The planes of the future could be flown with liquid fuel made from coal or natural gas. Already the United States Air Force has carried out tests flying a B-52 Stratofortress with a coal-based fuel. And JetBlue Airways Corp. (Nasdaq:JBLU - news) supports a bill in...

GALVESTON - Next month, the world will get a glimpse of what Big Oil can bring to the fast-growing alternative fuels movement when a new biodiesel plant here, backed by a major U.S. oil company, opens for business. The plant, which can produce 20 million gallons a year of diesel fuel made from soybean oil, is among the largest of its kind in the nation and is expected to soon grow bigger. But what's more notable is that it is partly owned by Chevron Corp., the San Ramon, Calif.-based oil giant. With the investment, Chevron has become one of the...

Biodiesel enthusiasts have accidentally invented the most carbon-intensive fuel on earth By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 6th December 2005 Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic. In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter “containing 44×10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400...

NILAND, Calif. — The idea of replacing crude oil with algae may seem like a harebrained way to clean up the planet and bolster national security. But Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones and her husband, David Jones, are betting their careers and personal fortunes that they can grow masses of the slimy organism and use its natural photosynthesis process to produce a plentiful supply of biofuel. A few companies are in a race to be first to convert algae to fuel on a commercial scale, and it will require not a small amount of money, luck and biotech tweaking. “You have a vintage...