As part of our Advanced Bioenergy Accelerator, the Carbon Trust intends to make a multi-million pound investment to support the development and commercialisation of microalgae biofuel technologies that have the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Microalgae can be cultivated and manipulated to produce high yields of oil that can be used as a feedstock for further refining into transport oil. The potential biomass yield of microalgae is vast compared to conventional agricultural biofuel feedstocks and it has few of their negative impacts (it does not require arable land or freshwater and does not compete with commodity food crops). Therefore, the production of microalgae biofuels at scale would represent a disruptive technological breakthrough. However, many challenges remain to make low cost algae biofuels a commercial reality.
Following an extensive programme of work over the last year, analysing the algae biofuel opportunity and developing an appropriate R&D investment strategy to overcome these challenges, the Carbon Trust intends to fund R&D into microalgae derived transport fuels through the Algae Biofuels Challenge, ABC.
The ABC is a two phase programme with the first phase addressing fundamental R&D challenges and the second phase moving to large scale production of algal oil. The total programme cost is expected to be in the region of £20m-30m, with up to £10m-16m of Carbon Trust funding. Further details about the two phases of the ABC can be downloaded using the summary links on the right hand side of this page.
The call for proposals for Phase 1 of the ABC opened in October and closed in mid-December 2008 and to accompany the launch of the ABC, we held an event in October in London. Those applicants who have put forward EOIs and have been taken through to the full application stage are listed on our Algae Biofuels Challenge forum. To view this list please register to join our forum.
For more general information about our bioenergy activities, or to be added to our interest list to receive regular updates and announcements about the Algae Biofuels Challenge, please email us at directed.research@carbontrust.co.uk.
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