So where does the glucose come from? This seems like a giant step backward on the road toward sustainable biofuels.

I think the future of biofuels and even most agriculture is to become far more independent of Mother Nature. That will take decades but it should be doable. Specifically we could grow biofuels and nutrition inside very large industrial multi-floor buildings with bioreactors packed on each floor using an input of the necessary minerals, air, LED light and synthetically made organisms. The electricity for such bio-factories should of cause come from renewable energy such as solar, wind and hydropower.

The fact is that 99% of all the soon to be 7 billion humans on this planet want to consume like the most affluent 1% and this desire is very much driving global economic growth. I have no doubt that the 99% will achieve their wish in a not so distant future (50 years or so). However, this growth could turn into a nightmare scenario unless we are clever and stay focused on finding ways to produce everything we need in a manner that will not destroy the planet. Old fashioned farming is not the future. It may be more romantic than giant bioreactor facilities but it will kill the planet. We need to get rid of it or we need to reduce the number of people on this planet. I prefer to sacrifice old farming.

I liked the algae to fuel idea better when it was about recycling atmospheric carbon; ie not only do you get fuel out of it, you also cut carbon emissions. I thought the idea was to have vast algae farms in deserts, using briny or otherwise non-potable water resources. seems like now they will have to have one GMO organism to process the glucose, and another one or more to process biomass into the feedstock glucose. did they really think this through?

@Henrik,

We're not really talking about an orbital space station or a colony ship, are we? We've got lots room...lots of sunny deserts near the ocean or salinated water sources (e.g., the Salton Sea). We've got lots of carbon-rich flue gasses, livestock runoff, and other industrial biproducts. And, we need to produce millions of barrels per day to make a dent in our fossil fuel consumption.

What I think Chevron likes is the idea that they can use their existing infrastructure to make more of their existing products. As a transitional strategy, that may have some merits. If they do it by removing billions of tons of CO2 that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere, it's probably at least carbon neutral.

I remain skeptical that it can be cost effective if they require expensive reactors and agricultural product inputs. But, who knows?

In the long run, I still think it's easier to transport electricity from a dessert solar power plant than mess with algae and refining. Maybe the best carbon capture we could ever do is to use algae oil to replenish the national petroleum reserve.

These guys are throwing money away. We need to be finding new areas to drill. Thanks to Cuba, the Chinese are drilling off the Cuban coast now.....but nooooooo, don't let American companies drill in new areas in the Gulf, Pacific and Atlantic, or in ANWR!

These Solazyme bioreactors will not use light so they will not cost a lot to build and they will not use much electricity either for heating. Because they convert sugar to oil and not sugar to ethanol I guess they also save a lot of the energy that is normally used to purify the ethanol by distillation. Oil and water separates naturally without any energy intensive processes. As I see it the progress is that this process is a less energy consuming way of making a biofuels from sugar.

Brazil and other sugar producers will gain from this process. The next natural step is to do the sugar as well in photosynthetic bioreactors. As I say this is still not economic because such reactors will cost a lot mainly because of expensive LEDs and moreover I think the necessary electricity is still too expensive to compete with sugar derived from conventional agriculture. However, time and environmental demands will drive the price of sugar from conventional farming up. Electricity on the other hand will cost less in the future mainly because wind power is becoming less expensive (the past 20 years the price dropped 80% measured by cent/ kWh and is now on par with nuclear or coal). At some point in time the economics will be most favorable to “synthetic farming” rather than conventional farming. Give it 10 or 15 years and the first commercial scale photosynthetic facilities will go online. So no there are no orbiting space ships it is far more down to earth than that ;-). But I admit the whole idea of dropping conventional farming is rather radical. It will eventually change our landscape profoundly. Nature forest etc will be back to the areas that right now are covered with some sort of mono species farming. That is progrees in my eyes.

Henrik, I can't agree more.
Consider that at the moment, the amount of energy we consume for electricity, transportation and heating is manyfolds what we need for eating.
(we eat about 3000 kcalories/day = 300ml of gasoline)
So once we are capable of producing all our energy needs out of wind/solar/nuclear, it's only a few percentages extra to produce our 'food energy' out of it also. The only trick is to convert the energy to food. Even with an efficiency of 20%, it will be very economical. I bet the GM-micro organisms of the future will even taste better and certainly be healthier than roast beaf.
Though, I think converting electricity to light and then light to biomass is not the most efficient way.
I would bet on converting [heat or electricity] to H2 and then convert CO2 and H2 to biomass and O2. (H2 in solute, not gaseous, so it can't explode)
One large (nuclear) facility of 5GWe with a total conversion efficiency of 50% could produce 600000 kCalories/s, or the food needed in a day by 200 people every second. It could produce the food for 17 million people continuously, without an acre of farmland. Because the conversion of gasses to food is a bulk process, it can be made very scalable. I see they introduced a human glucose transporter molecule into their algae. Why not intoduce muscle proteins also, so we can grow steaks.

Alain and Henrik, you guys are obviously eat to live kind of people as apposed to live to eat kind of people, right? Grow your own steaks!!! shiver...
I don't think its much of a long shot to say that most people would rather eat a nice crisp, juicy organically grown apple than some bioengineered nutritional paste manufactured in giant vats. If food production is transfered from farmers to large metanational industrial coorporations, that seems like what we're trying to get away from in the energy field!

A better plan might be to grow some of your own food on a green roof or in your backyard. Sort of like producing your own power right?

Now if they grow this in saltwater, we have a chance.Otherwise we trade an oil shortage for a water shortage.

You're right, the average apartment dweller would be doing pretty good to grow some herbs in a pot on the balcony. Now if buildings other than those used for living in opened up their roofs to gardening in trays or conversion to actual green roofs, that would be something. Think employee owned rooftop garden on top of a large industrial building, the produce goes to the employees or can be sold for profit or given to charity, the business gets reduced cooling load in the summer due to water evaporation and a "green image". The employees get to go outside and do something different on coffe breaks. I would love to get away from my computer for once, most of the time I end up reading things like this!

As for the actual topic of the post, biodiesel, I'd like to see the ratio of energy in to energy out, I imagine it would really depend on where the sugar comes from, anyone find any answers to what they are proposing as glucose feedstock?

Ha! good points there Healthy Breeze, Its not realistic to provide all your food needs from your backyard, but for example I easily grew all the potatoes I needed for a year in a patch about 10m square. Corn and beans are pretty easy too. Grain is hard to do yourself though and as for livestock, well you can get eggs from some chickens but butchering in your basement is a bit... creepy for the neighbours!

Jesse:

I'm too busy working for a living. I don't have time to be a subsistence farmer, too. This is the whole reason we have civilization in the first place. We produce enough surplus food so that people like you and me can sit on GCC and gab instead of struggling with keeping the weeds out of the beans.

Very interesting to see an algae to grow like a mushroom. I do hope this new fuel will come soon enough to help against the growing gas price.