ALTERNATIVE FUELS: Green Crude

A one year-old company in San Diego, Sapphire Energy, uses algae, sunlight, carbon dioxide, and non-potable water to make "green crude" that it contends is chemically equivalent to the light, sweet crude oil.

Chief Executive Jason Pyle said that the company's green crude could be processed in existing oil refineries and that the resulting fuels could power existing cars and trucks. It has the potential to be the great 'silver bullet' that creates the environmental paradigm shift that many people claim will be required to combat global warming.

Sapphire Energy expects to introduce its first fuels in three years and reach full commercial scale in five years.

While each acre of corn produces around 300 gallons of ethanol per year and an acre of soybeans around 60 gallons of biodiesel, EACH ACRE OF ALGAE THEORETICALLY CAN PRODUCE 5,000 GALLONS OF BIOFUEL EACH YEAR!

The company's Chief Executive wouldn't cite the price tag for producing a barrel of green crude, but he described the expected cost as competitive with extracting oil from deep-water deposits and oil sands. In other words, it won't be cheap - but they expect it to be clean in the refining process and cleaner from the tailpipe. Independent studies on the content of its emissions are ongoing.

There are plenty of companies working toward producing oil from algae. The idea isn't new, but interest and research have grown so significantly that websites such as Oilgae.com are devoted to the topic.