This guy wants to save the world (and just might).
Let’s take a look at the person who was ranked #57 on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world for 2008.
His name is Isaac Berzin and his high stakes game is algae biofuels. I was fortunate enough to meet him earlier this month at a presentation for a group of students at the Fletcher School of Tufts University. Isaac approached his topic by explaining that we need to understand the relationships of business, policy and technology in order to appreciate the context of his invention, the opportunity it represents, and the scope of the challenges that lie before us.
The problems:
Isaac doesn’t play small. In fact, he intends to solve three of the planet’s most significant problems all at the same time. These are:
1. Clean air.
2. Renewable food.
3. Sustainable fuel.
To help his audience understand the concept of biofuels more fully, Isaac reminded us how primitive hunter-gatherer nomads evolved into sophisticated societies by mastering agriculture. The ability to grow our own food was key to stability and enabled cultures to move beyond survival mode
Why then, are we still in hunter-gatherer mode when it comes to finding fuel resources?
The key to long term stability and sustainability, I learned, is our ability to grown our own fuels. Sound like science fiction? That’s what I thought. But I was about to find out that the technology to do so is already coming into production around the world. Algae really do have the potential to clean our air, provide feedstock and fuel our energy needs. Here’s how it works:
Growing our own fuel. The technology:
Question #1: Can you name the world’s leading coal producers/consumers?
Answer: U.S., China, Russia & Australia.
Question #2: Can you name 4 countries with significant desert areas?
Answer: U.S., China, Russia & Australia.
Hmmm. That’s an interesting coincidence. According to Isaac, it’s also a perfect opportunity.
You see, coal is the world’s leading source of power. It is also the dirtiest, emitting more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere than any other kind of energy. But there’s good news: algae loves Carbon Dioxide. It gobbles the stuff up, using it as fuel to sustain massive growth (at peak optimization algae can double its mass every couple of hours).
Isaac has figured out how to capture emissions from power plants, feed them to the algae then extract what is essentially ethanol from the bloom. Of vital importance is the fact that his process (which has been proven at an Arizona Public Utility project that has received over $70m in funding from the Department of Energy) dries the algae with excess heat from the power plant. This means that he can achieve dual, simultaneous goals of positive energy exchange & carbon reduction: the power plant emits only half the greenhouse gas that it did previously while the algae system requires only 10% of the energy that it produces.
Sound good so far? It gets even better.
Remember how Isaac wants to clean our air, generate sustainable fuel and maintain renewable food supplies? Consider these points:
• Algae growth requires only land (or a body of water) sun and CO2.
• Isaac’s process requires no modifications or disruptions to the host facility.
• CO2 emissions become algae food, transforming pollution into profit.
• 90% of our fuel today is based on ancient algae (what we now call ‘fossil fuel’).
• 50% of the earth’s oxygen comes from algae.
• Algae uses any quality of water (such as brackish underground lake water found in deserts) and is highly adaptable to extreme conditions (hot cold, acidic, alkaline, etc).
• Algae production doesn’t compete with the food supply.
That last point is incredibly important. Allow me to expand.
Food or Fuel? The rationale for biofuels.
Ethanol (a gasoline replacement that is typically generated from corn, soy and similar feedstock products) is based on sugar and remains relatively expensive for several reasons:
1. Crops require fresh water, which is increasingly limited.
2. In the U.S., ethanol is usually produced in the Midwest (where the feedstock is grown) then shipped to east/west coasts where we most need fuel for transportation.
3. Fuel prices in this model are attached to harvest yield; when crops fail, both food and fuel prices rise together. Since we can’t generate cheap fuel from expensive feedstock, we are forced to face a moral dilemma: ‘food or fuel?’
This is a particularly difficult issue that is rooted in our subsidy-based agriculture policy and has global consequences. As a major exporter of food product, U.S. policy to convert feedstock into domestic fuel significantly affects the security and stability of our import partners throughout the world.
Global policy: stability, security and pragmatism.
Isaac describes himself as a scientist-turned-businessman-turned-policy manager. Global food and fuel shortages, he recognizes, can be addressed by adapting his algae fuel production method to seaweed (which would be produced coastally in the U.S., eliminating excessive transportation costs). Not only does he believe that it is technically possible to produce 20% of our ethanol from non-food crops by 2020, but he also claims there is tremendous potential for return on investment.
With corn-based ethanol, he explained, most of the crop (stalks, leaves) is discarded. The net current yield equals approximately $600 per acre. With seaweed on the other hand, the entire product is used resulting in a yield closer to $34,000 per acre! And since seaweed extracts carbon from seawater there is no need for a power plant.
The bottom line is that the U.S. is the world’s largest importer of liquid fuel, so fuel stability (including biofuels production) goes a long way toward increasing our energy security. Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” paints power plants as the bad guys, Isaac says. While that point can be debated, it is a fact that China, U.S., Russia and Australia are the world’s largest energy users, all have vast deposits of coal, and the problem isn’t going to simply go away.
Almost every day a new coal plant is built in India or China. Business is headed toward cap and trade regulation that will limit but not eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. Like it or not, fossil fuels will be in production for the foreseeable future. Says Isaac, “We need to get used to the idea that we are going to burn coal and find a way to mitigate it. But the power industry will do nothing without policy, and they are on a 40-year decision cycle.”
I’m sure we can’t wait that long. And I know that when it comes to determining energy policy, Isaac Berzin gets my vote.
