California Center for Sustainable Energy

CCSE’s Kara Holman investigates Sapphire Energy’s new technology

It’s not only vehicles that are getting eco-friendly, gasoline is also going green!

Sapphire Energy, a La Jolla based company, is making gasoline from algae, to produce ”green crude” oil. The production process relies on photosynthetic microorganisms, such as algae, sunlight, CO2 and non-arable land. These photosynthetic microorganisms produce “green crude” that, when refined, produce gasoline, not ethanol and not biodiesel. The end product is, in fact, 91-octane gasoline.

Here in San Diego, traveling by car is expensive, but this green oil may have consumers feeling some financial and environmental relief.

“With any alternative, there is the potential to lower prices, not only for our gasoline but for the energy market as a whole, said Kristina Burow, Principal with ARCH Venture Partners. “In addition to the cost, Sapphire will bring a cleaner, greener gasoline to the market, something everyone will benefit from.”

According to Burow, there is no ‘food vs. fuel’ tradeoff. The process is not dependent on crops or valuable farmland.

“The process uses non-arable land and non-potable water and delivers 10 to 100 times more energy per acre than cropland biofuels, said Burow.”

The California Center for Sustainable Energy’s Climate Change Program Manager, Andrea Cook, Ph.D. says biofuels from algae have great promise.

“They work well at the small scale, but the challenge is to scale it up to be commercially viable,” said Cook.

Sapphire Energy says it plans to be at commercial sale production within three to five years.