Powering the Dream_ The History and Promise of Green Technology - Alexis Madrigal [72]
And it is labor. The collection is really, truly alive and requires care like a tiny, slimy pet. The microorganisms sit in rows of test tubes, living and reproducing. Every two months they have to be transferred, or “passaged,” to a new nutrient-rich tube. Random genetic mutations can enter a population and lead to permanent genetic changes. The algae can die.21
It’s not exactly clear how it happened, but a review released earlier this year found that more than half the genetic legacy of the program had been lost. Only twenty-three of the fifty-one strains that were extensively studied during the program remain viable to grow again. The losses to the rest of the algal cultures in the collection were even worse. “The really bloody shame is that of those 3,000 [original species], there are maybe 100 to 150 strains that remain at the University of Hawaii,” lamented Al Darzins, who heads up the resurgent algal biofuels research program at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.22
The way the United States has spent green-tech R&D funding has hurt the efficiency of the research. We’ve gotten less for our money than we should have. Programs that started during the boom of the late ’70s were abandoned during the early ’80s, even if they were promising. Despite the best efforts of cash-strapped researchers, not everything can be frozen cryogenically awaiting the next period of high energy prices. If anything, government support should be highest during periods of low-energy prices. “We need a countercyclical investment pattern,” said Gregory Nemet, an energy innovation researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “When the market dies, we need to ramp up the public R&D. We need to grab those people and get all their data and codify their knowledge so it’s not lost.”
While the valuable NREL archive of algal biodiversity languished in the Hawaii basement, the world around it changed. Genetic and genomic research and understanding skyrocketed. Oil demand grew, particularly in massive developing countries like China, India, and Indonesia. We kept burning two barrels of oil for every one that we found.23 All of a sudden, interest in algae-based biofuels exploded. Venture capital and corporate money flowed back into the field. On January 2, 2008, oil hit $100 a barrel for the first time. Despite some ups and downs, the price of oil remains substantially higher than it was through much of the 1990s. As a result, more than fifty companies are now at work on some aspect of biofuel production from algae.24
This time around, however, the big boys have even gotten involved. Exxon Mobil decided to invest $600 million into a joint venture with Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics for research into next-generation algal fuels.25
Over the past few years Darzins has revived the venerable Aquatic Species Program at NREL. Applying new genetic science, they have been hard at work learning the biology of microalgae. Graduate student Lee Elliott of the Colorado School of Mines has collected five hundred new species as part of the long-term rebuilding of the biological library. To a certain extent, the problems of maintaining a microorganismal library have been solved. Cryogenic freezing techniques were developed at the University of Texas UTEX Culture Collection of Algae.26 Because of this, the NREL team has been able to freeze and then revive 91 percent of their microorganisms.27
Despite the lost decade, algal oil makers are optimistic that they are about to ride