Biofuels

This is an exciting time when so many breakthroughs are being made which beckon with a bright future of limitless clean energy. There is also this bleak future we're facing where dependency on fossil fuels will doom our society to death and destruction of the wonderful lifestyle we currently enjoy. Somewhere between those two extremes is where our actual future is. If a new biotech company, LS9, has anything to say about it our future is closer to the brightness of limitless clean energy than the darkness of peak-oil-post-apocalyptic doom.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced today that a second round of funding opportunities for transformational energy research projects that will be made available through the Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). At an event today with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Secretary Chu announced $100 million in Recovery Act funding will be made available to accelerate innovation in green technology, increase America’s competitiveness and create jobs.

Codexis, a Redwood City, Calif.-based startup with oil giants Shell and Chevron among its backers, is in the business of so-called evolved biocatalysts: It takes a natural microbe or enzyme and tweaks the DNA sequences to create new variants, then searches for the variants best suited to development of new, potentially cheaper drugs (Pfizer used Codexis enzymes to produce Lipitor) and non-ethanol biofuels. This summer, the 7-year-old startup said it was looking for ways to apply this expertise to the emerging market for carbon capture technologies.

Sapphire Energy has received about $105 million in grants and loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy - part of some $600 million in outlays to 18 experimental biofuel sites across the U.S. Sapphire says it will use the money to further its laboratory work and build algae ponds in the New Mexico desert. The company says it can produce an algae-based equivalent of crude oil that can be processed into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel at traditional petroleum refineries – thereby taking advantage of existing infrastructure.

A Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee will consider nine energy and climate policy bills this week, covering topics from engineering education and wind energy research to carbon capture technology development incentives and biofuels for small engines. Many of the bills would authorize research spending at the Energy Department, and DOE Undersecretary Kristina Johnson will testify before the Energy Subcommittee. Five of the bills have already passed the House this year.