BP Forms Joint Venture with Verenium to Advance Cellulosic Ethanol

The following announcement is pretty cool news. As you may have guessed already, I'm a pretty big fan of algae as a total petroleum replacement. Since the largest user of oil is plastics (NOT fuel), that is what needs to be replaced and, frankly, few other renewable technologies have the ability to do that. Sorry, hempsters, not even the magic weed can.

Anyway, in the interest of further looking towards Flux Capacitor 1.21 GIGAWATTS technologies, this one is pretty awesome too. The use of leftover biological "stuff" as fuel is a good idea, though I'd rather see it made into compost. But hey, I grow stuff, so I'm a big fan of compost. :)

So...without further ado, here's the latest on that front:


BP has announced a 50-50 joint venture with Verenium to develop and commercialize cellulosic ethanol from non-food feedstocks.

The companies have committed $45 million in funding and assets to progress the development of one of the nation's first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol facilities, located in Highlands County, Florida.

Yes, it will take years to scale up cellulosic (and algae) energy systems, but the pace of breakthroughs and production focused investments remains one of the most compelling stories emerging in the energy sector.

Read more at The Energy Roadmap.