Today in Biofuels Opinion: “Algae is considered a lot father away than ten years.”
From SeekingAlpha: “The Gigaton Throw Down has published a 150 page report on their view of the big energy bets for the next ten years. They analyze nine energy technologies that have the potential of displacing at least a billion tons of CO2 each within the next ten years. A gigaton by their calculation is 205 gigawatts of installed power, which is about 5% of US energy consumption. Biofuels: yes, but a close reading shows that ethanol, in any flavor, really does not make much economic sense on a macro scale. Ignores/understates the additional cost of erosion and fertilizer for cellulose ethanol, assumes a near zero cost for those feed stocks, and assumes a huge amount of currently non-agricultural land can be used in the future with some unspecified technology. Does not address that simply burning the feed stocks of cellulose alcohol produces more energy (as electricity) than ethanol, and a lot less expensively. Biodiesel is mentioned, but no explanation of how it will become an important part of the energy picture energy. Algae is considered a lot father away than ten years.”
Kilimanjaro Biofuels founder Clive Richardson: “I had represented D1 Oils Ltd’s pre floatation period in Thailand and laid the foundations for an extended Ministry of Thailand and DTi sponsored period of research. This was negotiated late 2004 and put into effect April 2005. While Mark Quinn was ousted at this time it was a little late to stop this 6 month program. Steve Doubty tried to do this, even tried not to pay me for my work. In the September of 2005 I was asked by the Thai Prime Minister’s office to deliver a quote for D1 to supply each Tampon (District of Thailand) where Jatropha could be cultivated with a turnkey refinery platform that would produce and market D1 Bio Diesel. When I pushed the buttons on this I actually discovered, for the first time, that D1 had no refinery design, patent technology, knowlege of commercial seed crushing or any of the engineering skills that would be required. “
Free Subscription to the Daily Biofuels Digest e-newsletter
Subscribe FREE to the world's most-widely read biofuels daily. Enter your email in the box below,
Related Stories
Hot Topics
The Hottest 50 Companies in Bioenergy
Latest algae-to-energy news
Latest jatropha news
Latest Waste-to-energy news
Entry Information
Filed Under: Opinion
Comments: 1 | Post a Comment | Trackback URL
Post a Comment | Trackback URL
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Joelle Brink | Jun 29, 2009 | Reply
If I remember correctly, this was the period when D1 had to close its UK refinery due to financial problems and lay off all its workers, which probably explains their lack of refining expertise at the time.
D1 was a small-medium scale British producer then, but it was very innovative and committed to sustainable agriculture and biodiesel processing. I believe they did deploy the small scale mobile refineries they designed in India, but they would’t have had the scale or expertise at that point to process large amounts of Jatropha oil into biodiesel, and in the end they decided to ship raw Jatropha oil instead because it was more stable than biodiesel.
When BP later bought a stake in the company, it was in Fuel Crops only, not in biodiesel production. D1 is now trying to convince BP to change its stake from Fuel Crops to Oils, where its refining expertise would be much more helpful.
False starts and course corrections like this are very common in new industries like biofuels. Unfortunately over-promotion led many interested investors to expect quick scale-ups in fuel production and profitability and were angry when this didn’t happen. Those who stay the course will be reap the rewards.