An interesting piece of news in the New York Times yesterday about Sapphire Energy, the supplier of algae-based biojet to the recent flight trials by Japan Airlines and Continental Airlines. Sapphire says that it has revised its forecast on the amount of fuel that it will be producing from algae. By 2011, it will produce 1 million gallons. By 2018, that will rise to 100 million gallons and by 2025 they will be producing more than a billion gallons of fuel derived from algae. Now, this will not just be jet fuel – they are also looking at ground vehicle fuels – but this is a very positive announcement.

Last year, the aviation industry used some 70 billion gallons of Jet A-1 fuel. If just one company can produce 1 billion gallons of sustainable biofuel by 2025, imagine what will happen when the market really starts to open up for biofuel suppliers!

Another story has got me a bit mad. The Guardian today reports that the UK’s only wind turbine production facility will close down, as there is not enough demand for wind turbines in the UK at the moment due, in part, to red-tape stopping wind farms being built. I am appalled on two levels:

1. Why is the UK government not doing everything it can to push for renewable energy sources to be brought online as soon as possible? Power generation accounts for over 30% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions and with this news, we are throwing away a chance to reduce that number. At least the power generation sector has the option to almost totally decarbonise its production of electricity – the aviation sector doesn’t have that option just yet (although the massive amount of work we are doing will help us reduce our 2% of global emissions significantly).
2. Also, where is the green lobby? Why are they not protesting at this news? Why are they not climbing on the Houses of Parliament, or throwing deserts at politicians, like they have about aviation which is a much smaller part of the climate change problem and which has a huge range of emissions-reduction efforts underway? Is it not a high-profile enough target for them?

By losing this UK-based wind turbine production facility, a substantial opportunity to retain green jobs will be lost. Hardly a good sign of the ability to recover from the recession through green technology, is it?

Image by Flickr user Snapperz