Worldwide investments in algae have surpassed the $300 million dollar mark in 2008, with Sapphire Energy taking the lead with a $100 million dollar investment in R&D from Bill Gates.
The investements have been catacorised in 3 sections.
The first is public-private partnerships (PPPs), these are mainly investments between governments, universities, research labs and private companies, (DARPA, NREL, Carbon Trust). Other investments in the sector are
- Chevron partnered with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
- BP and the University of Berkeley and Arizona State University
- The US Department of Energy invested $2.3 in algae projects.
- Shell has invested with Cellana in a joint venture with the Hawaiian Natural Energy Laboratory and HR Biopetroleum.
- UK’s Carbon Trust announced the world’s largest algae challenge ($40 million).
The second wave of investments has been in direct investment in private algeae companies, this has mainly been the invstment made by Bill Gates’ Cascade Investments (Rockefeller Foundation)l, Chevron, BP, to Sapphire Energy.
Thirdly, investments in the third phase are in the nature of investing in the first stage of commercialization of algae for fuel. Algae for fuel, although has not yet proven to be totally commercially viable, the price of the final product has dropped dramatically from:
- $3000 per gallon in 2006
- $250 in 2007 to
- $10-20 in 2008
It has to be made clear however that these estimates are for now only based on small scale commercial pilot plants.
Other important investments include:
- GreenFuels recently signed a $92 million contract with Aurantia in Spain to scale up production, and capture 10% of Aurantia’s CO2 emissions from cement factories.
- Arizona’s Petrosun recently signed a contract for $40 million in China in a 50/50 venture with Shanghai Jun Ya Yan Technology. China will build an algae farm system using Petrosun’s technology.
Table courtesy of Biofuels International
Tony Piccolo – Aquatic Biofuel Specialist, Rome
Aquatic Biofuel Specialist
