Hooray for biofuels! I applaud the Austin American-Statesman for their front-page coverage and congratulate the University of Texas researchers, Jerry Brand (algae), Michael Webber (energy), and David Nobles (microbiologist), and Norm Whitton of Sunrise Ridge Algae, Inc. for achieving some media recognition of their work. I hold high expectations for their endeavors and high hopes that their work will make a difference for our society and the planet.
Austin American-Statesman reporter Asher Price wrote a provocative article about research on algae grown for biofuels (10/25/08, [Research, energy] “UT bottling up potential fuel source: algae,” p. A-1). Price featured the aforementioned esteemed scientists as well as a few of the more charming members of the UTEX Culture Collection of Algae and a popular local algae habitat, Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant.
Cognitive dissonance comes to mind while pondering how I feel about the story reported. Ever since I heard a biodiesel producer at the Renewable Energy Roundup mention in Fredericksburg a couple of years ago the idea that algae could replace food crops as a profitable source for biofuels, I felt very hopeful about these humble photosynthesizers. Conversely, the fact that DARPA has taken a lead role in developing biofuels from algae concerns me. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, although instrumental in developing the internet and the world-wide web, although motivated by a desire to maintain strategic communications in the fallout of a nuclear war, at least for me, evokes images of super secret military operations, robo-soldiers, spy drone aircraft, “Star Wars,” etc. This all makes me wonder why it took a challenge from the “black” espionage bureau to focus attention on biofuels development from algae. Don’t get me wrong, I heartily approve that they spend our money on renewable fuels research rather than on more incredible ways to kill people.
This might seem tangential (not to my regular readers). The fact that our capitalist nation could not garner sufficient cooperation from the non-military commercial domain to develop this technology deeply concerns me. Diplomats often refer to military solutions as last resorts – what happens after all else fails. (“All war represents a failure of diplomacy.” Tony Benn (b. 1925), British Labour politician. speech, Feb. 28, 1991, to House of Commons. The day the Gulf War ended.) Perhaps parochial capitalist corporate culture inhibits the kind of civilian sector cooperation that might have fostered algae biofuel research before this eleventh hour as global energy markets, the economy, and climate slide down a slippery slope towards chaos. On the other hand, the Department of Defense encouraged a consortium of computer companies to create Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) in 1982 to make better microprocessor chips. Perhaps the mercantilists who produce our “stuff” specialize so exclusively on that task they simply trust that the government (the one who keeps them “leashed” and causes all their problems) will keep an eye on global nuisances and complicated stuff. The Price article illustrates some of these complications that cause eyes to glaze over, but nonetheless matter in public policy discussions.
Characterizing algae as a carbon dioxide sink, in addition to a fuel source – as Mr. Price and Sunrise Ridge Algae (Texas Emerging Technology Fund Recipient) do – probably overstates the role of biofuels farming in addressing global warming. Absolutely, algae can absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide, so does every other organism that performs photosynthesis. Unfortunately, at least in the wild, algae can grow explosively, as they soak up all available nutrients and carbon dioxide dissolved in the ambient water. Just like yeast making (excreting) beer, algae abruptly die after exhausting all the available food. At that point, the dead algae begin feeding a ravenous and prolific population of bacteria that promptly soak up all the oxygen and render the local aquatic environment anoxic – the recipe for a marine “dead zone.”
Okay, so algae grown in controlled circumstances would not run amok like wild populations do. The farm-raised algae (presumably the well-behaved strains) would feed into biofuels production rather than oxygen-sucking bacteria production. In that case, all the carbon captured by the algae would become hydrocarbons destined to burn (oxidize) and the CO2 almost immediately returns to the atmosphere. By this logic, growing algae for biofuels does not constitute a carbon sink but rather an elision. Assuming that the process may eventually produce a net energy benefit without the investment of fossil fuels along the way, algae-based biofuels would at best provide carbon-neutral energy. They will not produce a net reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Anyone who genuinely believes that cars, trucks, jets, or ships burning any liquid hydrocarbon (algae-based or not) will ever sequester their CO2 only kids himself.
The Energy cost of carbon sequestration will, in my judgment, keep it impractical for widespread use. The energy costs of many alternative fuels and high-tech greenhouse gas remedies will keep them in the realm of fantasy as long as our research and development practices remain frozen in the era of fossil fuels. One commentator posing as an anthropologist predicted a distant future name for denizens of the era that began with the coal-fired industrial revolution and ended with depletion of petroleum, natural gas, and coal. He called the species “Hydrocarbon Man.”
Hydrocarbon Man will not solve today’s energy and climate change problems. One way or another, his successors will. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) wants desperately to discover the fuels of the next era. NREL, a thoroughbred offspring of the hydrocarbon industrial era, focuses on extremely narrowly circumscribed problems and solutions and accomplishes many great things. However, this myopic engineering perspective landed us in the current dilemma. It alone will not lead us out. Don’t get me wrong, I respect engineers for what they do that I cannot. Nevertheless, I believe that the revolutionary solutions we need will require an interdisciplinary approach not on today’s agenda for discussion.
Energy research should involve ecologists and microbiologists, among others. After four billion years of evolution on Earth, biological systems have a tremendous amount to teach us about energy budgets and the conversion of solar power into renewable and sustainable fuel forms that we can enjoy. Mr. Price does mention UT microbiologist David Nobles but only to vouch for the yields and nutrient requirements of algae compared to corn.
As it turns out, but Price did not mention, Dr. David Nobles and Dr. Malcolm Brown, of the University of Texas Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, genetically modified a blue-green alga (cyanobacterium) to produce glucose, cellulose and sucrose that can then become ethanol and other biofuels. Rather than the destructive process Price describes for extracting oil from algae, Brown and Nobles describe a process that in effect transforms cyanobacteria into nano-factories that continuously excrete the desired biochemicals. I find this news very encouraging. At least it suggests another way to mitigate the food versus fuel dilemma surrounding biofuels and reduce pressure on tropical forests (see: Malaysia oil palm crops). However, without interviewing them, I cannot know if the researchers mentioned venture in the directions that I describe.
Human technology must mimic nature to become sustainable. Industrial processes that yield net energy deficits will not survive. Research challenges that I envision will revolve around finding complementary processes that culminate in net energy surpluses. Energy inputs used to produce things should require compensatory offsets. If a factory produces a million gallons of biodiesel per year, the entire process of producing that biodiesel must consume far less energy than that which the million gallons embodies. Without a resulting surplus, why bother? These inputs may include fertilizer processing, transport, and application; algae crop propagation, cultivation, and harvesting; lipid (fat which produces the oil) separation and dehydration; fuel refining and distribution. The monetary and energy costs of research and development should fit in there somewhere, as should questions about cities designed for dependence on cars (other topic).
Alas, the laws of thermodynamics will not allow a discrete factory or process to create a surplus of energy beyond that amount intrinsic to the raw materials used and accounting for the energy consumed in the manufacturing process itself. We inhabit a finite world. A finite amount of solar radiation meets the Earth every day. Whether we consume fossil fuels or living organisms faster than they can convert sunlight into biomass, either way we create an unsustainable situation. This explains my interest in enlisting ecologists to work with the engineers.
Consider the context. Factories reside in ecosystems. The sun powers these ecosystems that provide services – without which neither we nor these hypothetical factories could exist. The ecologists would decipher the ecosystem deficits caused by the factory, its processes, and the effects of using its products. Some big companies plant trees to offset their carbon emissions. As an example of an offset measure, I would propose using agricultural and urban effluent as fertilizer for the algae crops. Mr. Price’s article contains a contradiction about whether or not algae crops require fertilizer, but no matter. Absorbing surplus organic compounds by algae crops would further an ecosystem goal – preventing formation of coastal dead zones – and reduce the ecosystem deficit created by the factory.
The Statesman article mentions growing algae in ponds. For the sake of cultivating the species that produce the highest quantities of the most usable lipids, industrial ponds would exist in hermetically sealed but translucent containers. Where wild algae grow in natural ponds, all sorts of random things happen. Many of those involve nature maintaining its balance. If we merely find ways to hijack microorganisms to produce biofuels that enable business as usual to continue, the ecosystem deficits will only grow. We must reduce our ecosystem demands.
I had to laugh after reading the last paragraph of the Price article. He quoted Norm Whiton, chief executive officer of Sunrise Ridge Algae, Inc. Whitton’s company conducts its research using sewage effluent at the Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant in East Austin. Local bird watchers and other wildlife enthusiasts flock to Hornsby Bend to enjoy the extraordinary variety of birds that feed on the multitudes of critters that thrive in the rich organic soup there – probably sequestering carbon dioxide. Whitton bemoans the probable necessity of using enclosed ponds to grow his algae. “In an open pond we were good at growing things, but not the algae we wanted. We grew toads and worms and bugs.”
For centuries, humans have strived to industrialize nature in order to maximize profits. Only since the advent of the environmental movement did people begin to worry about human survival in ecosystems damaged by the industrialization of nature such that they might not support us. More and more it seems that we need to figure out how to do it the opposite way.
July Meeting
1 year ago
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