Ecotality Life

Could the solution to oil dependence be growing vertically in a high-tech lab in far West Texas?

The hi-tech lab near El Paso, Texas, was built by two companies - Valcent Products of El Paso and alternative energy firm Global Green Solutions of Vancouver, B.C., Canada - and was created to research ways algae, tiny water-borne plants, can be used to reduce the world’s dependence on oil. The companies have developed a system they claim will allow for cheap mass production of algae in just about any corner of the world. The lab is a joint venture called Vertigro for the vertical set-up of the algae-growing system inside its greenhouse.

Vertigro says its bioreactor technology “is ideal for location adjacent to heavy producers of carbon dioxide such as coal fired power plants, refineries or manufacturing facilities, as the absorption of CO2 by the algae significantly reduces greenhouse gases.”

These reductions have value - in the form of Certified Emission Reduction credits, also called carbon credits, in jurisdictions that are signatories to the Kyoto Protocol. (They could become valuable in the U.S. under a future carbon emissions cap-and-trade regulatory structure as well.) Vertigro’s website points out that while the carbon credit market is still small, “it is growing fast, valued in 2005 at $6.6 Billion in the European Union and projected to increase to $77 Billion if the United States accepts a similar national cap-and-trade program.”

If the Vertigro system scales, it could greatly accelerate the growth of renewable fuels like biodiesel and ethanol made from oil extracted from algae. Currently, biodiesel and ethanol are seen by many expert as having limited potential to really replace fossil fuels because they are made from food crops like corn and soybeans, and increased production of ethanol is already driving up food prices.

Nobody eats algae. But you won’t be pumping it into your car’s tank any time soon. There are competing ideas about the best way to make lots of algae, and there are doubts that it can be produced and turned into fuel at lower cost than traditional oil. And even after those issues are settled, there’s still the cost of building the infrastructure to make and distribute algae oil on large scale.

Still, Vertigro’s technology is exciting, as are the possibilities.

Consider this: You can produce about 29 gallons of vegetable oil per acre per year from corn, 50 gallons from an acre of soybeans, 110 gallons from an acre of sunflowers, 130 gallons from an acre of rapeseed, 700 gallons from an acre of oil palm trees - or 100,000 gallons from an acre of algae grown in horizontal ponds. Vertigro’s vertical technology may top that.

Here’s a video of Valcent Products CEO Glen Kertz explaining the process and its advantages. Here’s a longer Vertigro video on YouTube.

Valcent is a public company with stock traded on the over-the-counter market. Global Green Solutions also is a publicly-traded company.

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