Every now and then we hear a specialist singing the merits of algae as the ideal solution for the fuel crisis. The idea of algae as a source of biofuel sounds wonderful, but detractors say it’s too expensive and impossible to scale up. But let’s hear for the optimists. (more…)

A California company working on algae biofuel has announced a distribution partnership with one of its process partners. World Water Works will distribute OriginOil’s dewatering and extraction systems to its global customer base. The agreement covers product integration, manufacturing and joint marketing. (more…)

Algae is one of the most exciting types of renewable fuels being researched, although there’s a long way to go before it becomes commercially available on a large scale – the aviation industry may be benefiting from algae before car drivers do.

But there are companies out there looking into ways to turn algae biofuel into a reality. (more…)

The Mexican government is funding an initiative to demonstrate industrial algae production to find out how viable it is for use in large-scale jet fuels production.

“Manhattan Project”, as the initiative has been dubbed, has recruited OriginOil, a California-based company that works to make algae competitive with petroleum. (more…)

If you haven’t heard of OriginOil by now, you probably haven’t been paying too much attention to the algae biofuel industry. That, in itself, is a mistake given that the algae industry has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past couple years.

OriginOil is one company in the algae (more…)

Algal technology company, Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation announced last week that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Impulse Devices, Inc (IDI) of California, United States.

Aquaflow director Nick Gerritsen says that the companies intend to work together to develop next generation technology to produce low-cost, renewable energy and (more…)

Biofuels have the potential to come from any number of sources. On one end of the spectrum we have a variety of crops and plant based biofuels that extend all the way to algae based biofuels, while on the other end we get more interesting developments like whiskey biofuel. One of the latest trends in biofuel news is the development of bacteria that are capable (more…)

Aurora Algae, formerly Aurora Biofuels, earlier this week introduced what the company says is the industry’s first photosynthetic algae-based platform for the production of sustainable products in the fuel as well as pharmaceutical, nutritional supplement and aquaculture markets. The announcement marks Aurora Algae’s transition from pilot technology development (more…)

Last week was an eventful one in venture capital clean tech funding, especially for California-based Solaria, Solazyme and Calisolar. Here’s a closer look at each of them, and what to look out for in the near future.

Solaria

HQ: Fremont, CA (more…)

1. Solar Sugar Daddy: During his Saturday address, President Obama lavished an astonishing $2 billion in loan guarantees upon two solar companies. This upended the administration’s seedling strategy with renewables — a few million for algae research here, a few million for efficient buildings there — without choosing winners. No question, then, that Spanish firm Abengoa is a favorite horse, receiving $1.45 billion for its plans to build 250 megawatts of solar concentrators outside Phoenix, Arizona. (more…)