Mankind is heading towards a catastrophe on a global scale due to ignorance, arrogance, and pure blindness towards the bigger picture.

Take a look at that CNN news clip:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2007/12/03/neely.indonesia.daying.rainforests.itn?iref=videosearch

Its enough to make you cry.

Personally I believe the facts are not there and would call on anyone who has more scientific information to pass on about oil palm trees v rainforest and sequestering facts etc.

Also does anyone know if you can gain carbon credits for palm oil trees and what that would be then per ha or per tree in comparison to the rain forest.

Also, I have not seen an adequate energy audit on the production of fertilizers which includes the energy costs of mining and refining of minerals, production of nutrient nitrogen, fertilizer transport and application, plus the energy cost of treating those farm runoffs that make it to a treatment facility, and those runoffs which result in pollution of surface waters.

I suspect that if a meticulous, all-inclusive energy audit of ethanol is produced it would appear as a losing proposition. The same goes for bio-diesel. Both, I would suspect, end up being very far from carbon neutrality.

I think the algae looks promising from the total energy prospective. But I think green hydrogen looks even better. I recently read a news release that researchers at GE have induced blue/green algae to produce gaseous hydrogen as a metabolic waste product. This trick was achieved mostly by modifying the pH of their environment and driving the metabolic processes into the near anaerobic state. If this could be scaled up into large-scale bio reactors, the impact could be momentous. Great care would, of course, have to be used to assure that the algae could never be released into the environment; such an event could, over the long haul, conceivably end up returning the earth to the reducing environment that existed before photosynthesizing organisms appeared on the scene if the hydrogen producers outcompeted and displaced the photosynthesizers.

Using CO2 enrichment:
gas fired - 4-5 acres/Mega watt
coal fired - 10-12 acres/Mega watt (due to the higher emissions of coal)

Annual Yield/Acre estimates: biodiesel 8k gallons(US) + ethanol 5k gallons(US) + 70 tons feed/fertilizer (This is a mid range estimate … theoretically biodiesel yield might be as high as 15k gallons per acre year). This requires enclosed “bioreactors” (solar collectors) to protect the genetic integrity of the less virulent HIGH YIELD algae strains.

That is about a 10X improvement over oil palm in yield per acre and about 40X the yield of soye for bio diesel … then add in the ethanol and feed also produced.

http://www.greenfuelonline.com/
is a good place to start. Arizon Power has a pilot program and plans to go to production in 2009. If I remember correctly it is 1.000 mega watt facility.

The other beauty of this technology with CO2 enrichment is that up to 40% of the flue CO2 can be captured and recycled into the “new” bio fuels, thereby reducing emission from the combustion process. If retrofitted to existing industry, there could be significant abatement.

Further, the “algae to bio fuel” is independent of the normal food chain!

I do aggree that considerable care is necessary in designing and deploying the technology correctly! The key is that it should be a National and Worldwide PRIORITY to expedite this technology to maturity and full production!

Also, genetic research to develop more virulant and higher yield algae strains that can thrive outside of the enclosed “bioreactors” is a major priority.

Second generation biofuel (using microbes to break down the entire plant) is not yet a commercial reality, it will take a decade before they come online and another x years before they offset any measureable amount of oil. Meanwhile we can grow second generation crops all over the world and produce the biofuel locally. Remember biofuel only contains 70% of the energy of oil and is not carbon neutral due to pesticides, herbicides, fertiliser, transport and processing costs etc but it is out best bet for a greener world so long as we can save biodiversity as well.

I shudder to think of the combined effects of increased CO2 production (not enough evidence for climate change - ha) from fossil fuel burning and reducing the earth’s ability to sequester it (only the oceans can save us now) that all of this might eventually have for our warming world.

Get ready for the average of 3 C atmosphere rise and pray that the methane clathrates stay put.

In any case, I would be very interested in hearing from you regarding what companies are close to commercializing biofuel from algae. I’ve seen a lot of websites and a lot of press releases, but I am not aware of one company, anywhere, that is yet able to grow algae and refine it into biofuel in a remotely commercial manner. I would love to be wrong in my assertion that this technology is not there yet. So who are they, and where? Back to you.

This is patently untrue. The bulk of today’s biofuel is actually produced overwhelmingly from existing agricultural land. From rapeseed in Europe to corn in USA, these fuels are not coming from the rainforest.

Now it IS true to that the rainforest is disappearing at an increasingly alarming rate. But this is mainly due to economic imperatives in developing countries - the desire for more food and more wealth - not specifically the desire for more biofuel. The real tragedy is the loss of biodiversity, not the sequestering of carbon, as many studies have found that carbon is not locked in the rainforest indefinitely.

The good news for all of us is that the writer of this article has gotten is really wrong in the last paragraph. Algae to Biodiesel and biomass to ethanol/biogenic fuels is already a reality and will be coming to a store near you soon! So one pressure on the rainforest will be solved – but the main threat to the rainforest remains - what do we do with the burgeoning developing work populations and their desire to “be like us”.

You could also say that a rainforest plantation sequesters more CO2 than a palm plantation.