Hydrotreating Algae for Jet Fuel

by Riggs Eckelberry (OriginOil/Algae Industry Magazine) ...(John) Daly concluded that investors are looking for biofuels winners in a field that was suddenly much more level. Disillusioned with the ongoing subsidies required to sustain ethanol, not to mention growing international anxieties about food prices, cropland displacement, and emerging skepticism about whether ethanol production even saves net energy, major consumers and potential investors want in on the ground floor for promising advanced biofuels.

...What’s prompting the military to take so proactive a role in generating algae oil supply?

We tend to think of markets as unified supply-and-demand exchanges. The supply-and-demand part is true, but the unified isn’t.

Buyers everywhere have needs, interests, and specifications for purchases that go way beyond short-term cost–income projections and profit ratios. Some cost inputs are offset by the need to attract customers for general sales, like the loss-leaders common in supermarket weekly coupons, or giving away New Year’s calendars to remind customers about a company’s services.