Aquadudes: 15 Saltwater-Based Energy Technologies Here to Save the Day
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) … Take the conflict over drilling for oil on federal lands in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If you drilled the provable oil reserve in the entire federal ANWR and flooded the world market with it – the reserve would be used up in 9 days, at 2050 consumption rates.
So that entire wrenching national debate is over a reserve that lasts from January 1 through January 9. And that’s just to keep ourselves in the fierce state of competition and conflict over resources as we have now.
…Long-term, here in Digestville, we see the solutions for liquid energy via the sea. Liquid energy that is based on sunlight, seawater, and atmospheric CO2 – those are abundant resources by any measure of human activity we can project for a long, long time.
Last we looked, there are 2 quintillion tons of atmospheric CO2, 343 sextillion gallons of seawater, and 173 million gigawatts of solar energy (per year). Unimaginable abundance. Any long-term energy solution that does not look to replete resources – and to the oceans – is completely crazy. The oil companies are well down that road, as is obvious to all.
…What are 15 salty water, CO2 and sunlight technologies – and where are they in development?
Heading for commercialization now
1. Joule Unlimited …
2. Sapphire Energy …
3. Aurora Algae …
4. Algenol …
Farther down the road
5. El Dorado Biofuels …
6. Ceres …
7. A NASA project … OMEGA …
Seaweed-based technologies
8. Bio Architecture Lab…
9. … University of Georgia and University of Puerto Rico R&D effort …
10. … Brazilian effort …
11. … Statoil and SES …
12. Ecofys …
13. Novozymes and Sea6 Energy …
14. The Irish …
15. Israel …
… But there’s a long-term story here too – and rethinking to be done at the policy and R&D level about how to get investments lined up with abundant resources instead of scarce ones. READ MORE and MORE (Biofuels Digest update 10/25/2012)
