The Solar Biofuels Consortium: Developing 2nd Generation Microalgal Biofuel Systems

  • Ben Hankamer, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Australia
  • Prof Olaf Kruse, University of Bielefeld, Germany
  • Prof Clemens Posten, University of Karlsruhe (TH), Germany
  • Dr Peer Schenk, University of Queensland, Australia
  • Dr Ute Marx, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Australia
  • Prof Anthony Larkum, University of Sydney, Australia
  • Prof Michael Hippler, Germany

    • The Stern Review ‘The Economics of Climate Change’ and the Nov 2007 IPCC Synthesis report on Climate Change both conclude that urgent action is needed to develop CO2 free energy technologies. Importantly the IPCC also reports that atmospheric CO2 levels above 450 ppm CO2-e (i.e. e=equivalent contribution of all greenhouse gases) are in the dangerously high range and that we have already exceeded this threshold (currently 455 ppm CO2-e) 10 years earlier than had previously been predicted. It is therefore highly advisable that that globally ~11TW-yr CO2 free energy capacity should be installed by 2025 (compared with a total global energy demand of ~15 TW-yr).

    Currently fuels make up ~67% of the global energy market. 2nd generation biofuel systems based on microalgal bioreactors are increasingly recognized as offering an important route to producing clean fuels in the form of bio-hydrogen, bio-diesel, bio-ethanol and bio-methane. Furthermore their production can be coupled to CO2 sequestration. Here the advances made by the Solar Biofuels Consortium (www.solarbiofuels.org) at the level of light harvesting antenna engineering, metabonomics, the development of salt tolerant microalgal strains as well as large scale bioreactor systems will be presented.