Highlights from the Algae Biomass Summit

October 1, 2015 |

The 2015 Algae Biomass Summit opened in front of a packed audience at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC. The first keynote and plenary speakers of the largest algae conference in the world were all in agreement that the industry advancements over the past year were proof that algae’s greatest potential was their ability to impact dozens of markets. The focus of nearly every speaker was how algae has become a technology platform with multiple applications.

“There’s Algae Inside.”

In his opening remarks, ABO executive director Matt Carr listed the benefits of using algae in the production of fuels, foods, medicine and other products, saying that in the future they might all carry the tag line: “there’s algae inside.”

ABO board chair and CEO of Cellana, Martin Sabarsky, echoed Matt’s words, and noted that algae are already impacting several industries. He noted that an impressive set of policy wins accomplished by the Algae Biomass Organization shows how ABO is punching above its weight class. This is largely due to the great potential of the organization’s members, which they’ve demonstrated in their commercial and pre-commerical operations.

A Vision of Innovation

Dr. Peter Licari of Solazyme, in a keynote address, noted that algae, a 1.5 billion year old organism, can help solve many of the challenges in the world today. Because they are among the first organisms to evolve they can produce any type of oil. The algae fermentation technology used by Solazyme can produce algae independent of the season, or geographic location. This advantage means they can produce a variety oils not available by traditional methods, such as tropical oils in the dead of winter in Iowa.

Industry Advancements Towards Commercialization 

Algae’s potential to consume carbon dioxide was discussed by CEO’s of some of the leading companies in the industry. CEO of Algenol Paul Woods noted that their process can use $2 of CO2 from the flue gas of a power plant to produce up to 7 barrels of fuel. His carbon reduction potential is also impressive; a 2,000-acre Algenol facility is the equivalent of planting 40 million trees. Executives from Joule Unlimited, LanzaTech, T2Energy, and Global Algae Innovations all agreed that carbon utilization was now a real business opportunity, and costly carbon sequestration options would not be competitive as the algae technology platform goes to commercial scale.

More on the story.

Category: Fuels

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