California Startup Promises to Produce 1 Billion Gallons of Biofuel by 2025

A California company called Sapphire Energy is promises to produce a billion gallons of biofuel made from algae by 2025. The young company is already testing fuels with airlines and is ramping up production facilities in New Mexico.

According to the company's plans, they will be producing over a million gallons of biofuels annually by 2011 and 100 million gallons annually by 2018 and then a billion gallons yearly by 2025.

That's pretty ambitious for a small company that's so far produced fuel in the hundreds of gallons. Considering what they've accomplished so far, though, it might be doable.

Continental airlines flew a 737 jet on Sapphire's fuel (mixed with regular aviation fuel, 50/50) in one engine and normal fuel in the other and did a full takeoff, climb, cruise at 37,000 feet, and a landing. Another test took place in Japan on a 747 with a blend of biofuels that included Sapphire's.

Another telling argument for Sapphire's success is a look at its backers: Bill Gates, the Rockefeller family, and some of the biggest names in finance have been in on Sapphire's game. Bill Gates has talked up algae as the future of biofuels (not corn ethanol) and most scientists agree that algae is carbon neutral.

Sapphire says the success of their biofuels is because the algae strains they've been developing are producing oils that are very much like regular oil. They say that it can be refined like regular oil into anything that crude oil can make: plastics, gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, you name it.

The aviation industry expects to be using biofuels on a large scale within 3-5 years.

Other companies producing algae fuels for research are Blue Marble Energy, Live Fuels, and Solazyme.