Biofuels heat up at the global scale

Good morning!

Biofuels in High Demand

The world needs biofuels, now!

• Look at Japan, which looks to adopt biofuels as nuclear dwindles (article).
• Look at Germany, which is committed to ending its nuclear program.

That’s why Mumtaz Khan, chief executive officer of Maybank MEACP Pte. has raised $150 million for clean power projects and plans to raise an additional $350 million by the end of 2012.

“If you’re lucky, you can get 11 percent in an oil or gas project in the Middle East,” Khan said. “In comparison, a biomass project in the Philippines could get you above 20 percent.”

Money talks.

In fact, “the clean energy industry attracted a record investment of $243 billion in 2010, topping investments in conventional power projects for the first time”, according to Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. (more)

More investment in clean energy than in conventional power? I like being in clean energy.

Helping Our Partners Win

It’s very clear that the algae industry is starting to heat up.

And so it’s a big deal that we now pre-treat algae before harvest, another competitive advantage for our partners.

As you know, we’ve announced the first two technologies in a “promising suite of technologies to pretreat the algae while it is still in growth phase”:

• In one project to improve extraction rates, our team learned how to improve cellular extraction by up to 15%, by injecting a natural substance just before the harvest.
• In another successful experiment to “soften up” the algae using electromagnetic pulses, we also found impressive gains in algae growth, an unexpected dividend!

There’s a race on for better growth and sustainability in algae production. We’re helping our partners win it.

Enjoy your week!

Riggs and team

Riggs Eckelberry
President & CEO
OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL)

View Paul Reep’s presentation at the Algae Biomass Summit. (PDF download).