BrevardBioDiesel Blog

NYTimes reports on founders of LiveFuels Inc. that are part of a wave of green energy companies searching for startup money.
Mike Briggs at University of New Hampshire originally produced some numbers regarding the amount of land necessary to produce enough algae to turn into biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels in the US.
The founders of LiveFuels didn't think wave energy, hydrogen fuel cells, wind energy, solar energy, cellulosic ethanol, or cow manure to methanol made good business sense - but biodiesel from algae piqued their interest.

The company projects that in three years it can produce some biofuel, which theoretically could eventually be produced in quantities of as much as 20,000 gallons of fuel a year per acre of algae.

Much of the interest was spurred by the previously abandoned DOE Aquatic Species Program. It closed in 1998 saying algae-to-biodiesel could only be effective if petro-diesel prices rose to 2x the current levels. 2006 levels are 3x then