Humble algae could be our saviour

It has been pointed out that in order to meet the EU target from locally farmed canola oil, the land set aside in the UK for growing an oilseed crop for the exclusive use for fuel would be 5.2 million hectares of the total of 5.7 million available. Evidently there isn’t enough land in the UK to grow oilseed for bio-fuel even to meet the EU 2020 target and to grow crops to feed people.

Already this has opened up a market for Canadian genetically modified canola. The strong oil demand from the EU bio-diesel industry already led to a sharp increase in Canadian canola crushings in October. The EU could import around 200,000 tonnes of rape oil in 2005-06, with most supplies coming from Canada. However all the GM canola grown on the Canadian prairies is not going to be sufficient to meet the future EU bio-diesel targets.

Bio-diesel is a form of solar energy. We are harvesting what the plant produced using photosynthesis to convert solar energy into chemical energy stored in the form of oils, carbohydrates and protein. The most efficient plants in converting solar energy into chemical energy are various types of algae.

Some species of algae are ideally suited to bio-diesel production due to their high oil content (some well over 50 per cent oil), with extremely fast growth rates. Algae farms would let us supply enough bio-diesel to completely replace petroleum as a transportation fuel.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US has performed research on harvesting bio-diesel from algae farms. They were using saltwater ponds in deserts to grow algae for biodiesel. NREL's research (pdf file 3.58MB) showed that 28.3 million tonnes of bio-diesel could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land which would almost cover the requirements of UK in 2020. In fact algae technology offers the opportunity to utilise land and water resources that are, today, unsuited for any other use. Land use needs for microalgae complements, rather than competes, with farming of crops for food.

In Western Australia and South Australia there already exists a nucleus of an industry that has been built up around growing algae in ponds with salt water and the extraction of high value added products such as beta carotene out of them.

Australia would be ideally placed to develop an alternative bio-diesel industry based on algae that could be grown in brackish bodies of water using an abundance of sunlight. In a recent project funded by RIRDC researchers at Flinders University has investigated the use of a green alga as a supplier of biological hydrocarbon. It is an avenue that is worth exploring before our oil-based economy runs into trouble.