Biofuels Firms Developing Solutions for Reducing The Nation’s Carbon Footprint: $104M Boost Jump-Starts Algae-Based Fuel Production
Mark LarsonThe biofuels industry is gaining momentum in San Diego and efforts are under way to get Congress to speed up its development with more funding and tax breaks.
“San Diego is one of the leading areas for biofuels research and development,” said Matt Carr, policy director of Biotechnology Industry Organization, an advocacy group for biotech companies in Washington, D.C.
Holly Lepre, vice president of CleanTECH San Diego, a nonprofit working to boost San Diego’s leadership in the clean-tech sector, says San Diego’s biofuels industry is strong, but it faces the challenge of keeping biofuel refineries — a big economic driver of jobs — from being built in other states.
“I would give our local biofuels sector a B rating,” she said. “The fact that we have several premier algae-based biofuels companies here speaks to the domain expertise we have.”
Lepre cited the three quarters of a billion dollars in funding attracted in recent years by local biofuel companies, Synthetic Genomics Inc., Sapphire Energy Inc., and defense contractor General Atomics, as proof that the area has powerful research expertise in biofuels. “The opportunity and potential for San Diego is enormous,” said Lepre. “We have a pretty good standing in the biofuels space race.”
Among the local companies chasing the emerging biofuels market is Sapphire Energy, which is developing algae-based biofuels. The privately held Sapphire has 140 employees, and has attracted $104.5 million in funding from the federal government — $50 million from the Department of Energy and $54.5 million from the Department of Agriculture.
The funding came after Sapphire won a competitive bid to build the first algal biofuel refinery to produce a low carbon alternative to petroleum-based fuels with renewable “green” gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The plant will be built on a 300-acre site in southern New Mexico. For the past 18 months the company has operated a smaller 100-acre facility in Las Cruces, N.M. Groundbreaking for the new operation is set for September.
“It will validate the economy of large-scale commercial build-out of the small-scale Las Cruces facility,” said Tim Zenk, Sapphire’s vice president of corporate affairs. “We’re much further ahead in this technology than anybody else. The investments we’ve made have put us in a really strong position.”
