(note: Robert works for Accoya, one of the most interesting green materials companies out there. I currently have a sample of their product and if I order from them for a project I’m working on, I’ll blog about it here.)

That being said, there is something phenomenally inspiring about the folks who have no shame about tackling the really big problems. This is a constructive sort of hubris, the kind that Larry Wall correctly identified as a virtue. Venter’s glorious hubris was on display this week at the TED conference, where he announced that he was working on a project to engineer a bacteria that turns carbon dioxide into methane and octane and that he expects results within 18 months on these fourth generation fuels.

Technorati Tags: biofuel, green, worldchanging

Unlike his work on completely synthetic lifeforms, this project is focused on modifying bacteria that already exist rather than building an organism from scratch. There are a lot of microorganisms that secrete hydrocarbons – methane is a common byproduct of bacterial decomposition of organic matter, yeasts will secrete ethanol, and according to the article, there are strains that will secrete octane, although not in industrially useful quantities. Venter’s goal is to solve that problem.

This is not a cheap undertaking. On average, a bacterial genome will have between 1 and 10 million base pairs. According to syntheticbiology.org, the cost of a gene is about $1 per base pair. (Checking the price list at Genemed Synthesis indicates that the previous figure is likely a bulk deal.) At that cost, its going to take a lot of dollars to iterate the project – even if they aren’t starting from scratch.

It’s interesting to me to compare this to the folks engineering algae for triglyceride production for biodiesel. Clearly, if Venter can make these bacteria produce industrially significant quantities, I predict he will win the market, since synthesizing octane directly involves less manufacturing than taking triglycerides and making the methyl esters of fatty acids (and, of course, the methanol also has to be synthesized somehow.) There’s also the issue that gasoline engines, despite their inefficiency, far outnumber diesel engines.

As an aside, If efficiency were in issue and diesels appeared to be a good solution for that, then there’s an interesting synergy possible, where Venter’s bacteria would produce methane that could be steam reformed into methanol for the methyl ester production. There might be an issue with the energy cost of the steam reformation process (although its unlikely, since that’s how most methanol is made today) and system losses in the extra processing step, but I’ll assume that if biodiesel can be made for parity or a small premium over petrodiesel, that its not that big of a deal.

Venter himself points out that once the techniques to improve production volumes are worked out, lots of other higher hydrocarbons can be synthesized. At this point, the vision is no longer unique. Lots of companies are working on bio-synthesis techniques to make industrial chemicals, including DuPont, which has invested heavily in such technology. This raises the question of whether what Venter is trying to do is technologically that unique. (Clearly, his product target is ambitious in any case.) My sense is that his approach is similar, but the scope of the modifications he’s making to the bacteria may be larger. If he’s successful in doing this once, he may solve a large part of the carbon crisis. If he’s successful in doing it twice, it will likely be the beginning of a revolution in large scale synthetic biology.

In considering this topic, I think something else extremely valuable is coming out of the biofuel boom. We’re learning how to quickly estimate environmental costs.

Technorati Tags: biofuel, energy, worldchanging

First, let me tackle the article. While no one will argue that corn ethanol is an extremely poor choice for a biofuel feedstock, it is also inarguable that the article focused on current biofuel technology. This implicitly assumes that all new biofuels will be roughly equally bad for the environment. Clearly, this is not the case, since algal-derived biodiesel and similar biomass-derived fuels will not contribute equally to global warming through the destruction of ecosystems. The article also assumed by implication that biofuels are the primary driver behind conversion of ecosystems to cropland. Past data would indicate that this is almost certainly not the case, since slash-and-burn was prevalent in the Amazon basin well before biofuels become a cause celebre. The issues around land use in the developing world would exist with or without biofuels contributing, since there is rarely an incentive for the governments who control these lands to preserve them. Rain forests do not yield significant economic benefit to those who live near them. All the biofuel boom has done is exacerbate the situation. Hopefully, this will bring attention to dealing with the root causes of the destruction of these ecosystems – namely, food security and poverty.

The media has been largely guilty of indulging in shrill hachet jobs on the nascent biofuel industry based on this article. I am certainly not implying that the authors of the Science report intended this; rather, I think that the natural tendency to want to take potshots at large targets is to blame here. Nevertheless, I think its important that people interested in short term energy development continue to work on capturing energy from biomass. With any luck, we’ll solve both the petroleum problem and the disappearing ecosystems problem at the same time.