At least two companies, Sapphire Energy and OriginOil, are developing ways of producing renewable crude oil through the processing of photosynthetic algae. As oil, this renewable crude is able to take advantage of the massive industrial infrastructure that supports the refinement, distribution, and retail of petroleum, making transitioning a simple matter of sufficient capacity. While there are no figures yet, both energy balance and water usage are supposed to be good. The potential here could be huge.

If renewable oil can be scaled effectively, traditional biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel become largely obsolete, overnight. Ethanol in particular is an inferior fuel to gasoline, both in terms of energy density and distribution logistics (since it is water soluble, it can’t be transported by pipelines), so the prospects for (corn) ethanol start to look pretty ludicrous to anyone but the agricultural lobbies. Biodiesel has potential (largely because it can also be processed from algae), but like ethanol, many existing feedstocks are either derived from food crops, or supplant them in global agriculture, since growing fuel for Americans is more lucrative than food for locals.

Still, while I think (nearly) carbon neutral liquid fuels are a hugely positive development, I have my reservations over widely embracing petroleum alternatives that perpetuate our existing infrastructure. The environmental and social problems associated with our endemic reliance on fossil fuels go beyond just carbon impact and energy independence. While it’s easy to forget given the current emphasis on CO2, carbon is hardly the only pollutant worth controlling - NOx and unburned hydrocarbons play a distinctly more direct role in killing people on an everyday basis, and they can’t simply be engineered away as long as we are using internal combustion engines. Cheap renewable oil also swiftly removes the incentive to rehabilitate dormitory suburbs into thriving local communities in their own right. And even if drivers aren’t commuting for 100 km, cars are still anathema to healthy urban neighbourhoods.

High gas prices (and to a small degree, the environmental impetus of climate change) has driven tremendous innovation in technology and urban planning in recent years, and it would be a shame if the (market) rug was pulled out from under it all. Genuine shifts towards a more sustainable, meaningful future have much more to do with changing the way we perceive our relationship to our environment (and I mean that on a local level, as much as on a macro one) than with simply mitigating the pollution we pump out. Until something forces that mental realignment, the status quo remains broken.

Via EcoGeek and gizmag.