These are exciting times if you are in the business of finding solutions to the harmful issues we created for our planet beginning 150 years ago. I'm talking about the ramifications of the so-called progress that was made during the industrial revolution and age of perpetual consumption which led to the depletion of our non-renewable resources, global warming, and unprecedented amounts of landfill waste and carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Since 1900, our world population has increased more than 6 fold, and the effect on our natural resources has been nearly devastating. As a result of our activity, climate experts agree that our planet is now warming between 0.5 - 1 degree Celcius per decade which could lead to dire circumstances. According to an article published by National Geographic in April 2009, "Global temperatures are shooting up faster than at any other time in the past thousand years" This warming has largely been caused by increased consumption in the USA and Europe and by the rise of populous new-wealth nations like China and India desiring western world lifestyles like that of their 1st world counterparts.

Thankfully a few focused and innovative thinkers and doers are working to curb this colossal negative trend by developing solutions that lessen the rate of this damage or in some cases negate it altogether.

This week we find Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI), a company from La Jolla, CA that is focused on bio-engineering algae for the production of biofuel. Together with Exxon Mobil Corporation they are investigating various strains of algae in the search for the best strain for producing carbon neutral biofuel. Their goal is to eventually find a way to produce commercially viable biofuel that can compete with fuel that is made and imported from foreign countries.

Results so far have been very promising...
Since ExxonMobil and SGI announced the algae biofuel program last July, researchers have made substantial progress, including:
• Isolating and/or engineering a large number of candidate algal strains and developing growth conditions under which these strains could be made more productive;
• Identifying and testing some of the preferred design characteristics of the different production systems; and
• Initiating life cycle and sustainability studies to assess the impact of each step in the process on greenhouse gas emissions, land use and water use.

ExxonMobil expects to spend more than $600 million on the algae biofuels program over the next decade, $300 million of which will be allocated to SGI.

See pictures of the greenhouse testing facility!
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=multim...

Sources:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0409/feature1/
http://www.syntheticgenomics.com/media/press/071410.html