Abstract
The remarkable research and commercialization progress you will read about in this special issue of Industrial Biotechnology represents the latest innovations in a rapidly growing field with strong underpinnings at research universities, national laboratories, and in the private sector.
For decades, we have expanded our understanding of how algae grow, consume carbon dioxide (CO2) and nutrients, evolve, and contribute to diverse ecosystems. We have learned how to harness algae to create valuable products and provide services. We also have uncovered more questions to ask and have a sense of what barriers or roadblocks are on the horizon.
The value of the progress so far, from a scientific perspective, is incalculable. And we are now beginning to see how this new knowledge can be harnessed for hundreds of applications with real-world impacts.
The Algae Biomass Organization (ABO), the trade group for the algae industry, was formed from a small group of researchers and scientists dedicated to developing new technologies from the latest findings. ABO has since grown to represent all segments of the algae value chain—not only research, but also commercial deployment, product development, and market access.
As you read some of the latest progress in the following pages, I urge you to consider how and why these advances are being supported. Millions of dollars have been spent by the private sector, but like all advanced technologies, much of the most impactful research is funded by government agencies tasked with science and technology development.
Funding the Research
Advanced technologies are often supported by governments that recognize the private sector is often unable, or unwilling, to take big risks in scientific breakthroughs for which the payoff may be several years in the future, or not guaranteed at all.
The United States has long supported exactly this type of research on algae. And progress has not been disappointing; while some of the stated goals of the earlier funding programs that examined algae as a source of hydrogen fuel in the 1970s and 1980s have been subsumed by more current technological and economic realities, the scientific and technological progress they triggered laid the groundwork for an industry with an ever-expanding economic impact.
We hope this support continues in today's uncertain political environment. Thanks to specific language written by Congress, in cooperation with ABO, algae funding by agencies like the Department of Energy (DOE) has been able to keep progress moving in the field.
In a spending arrangement laying out fiscal plans for 2017, Congress wrote that algal systems research under the DOE's Bioenergy Technologies Office would receive a $30-million infusion, with an additional $10 million for algae and other innovative Carbon Use and Reuse technologies under DOE's Fossil Energy Office.
This language appeared directly in the appropriations bill. Rather than being left to the discretion of an agency bureaucracy that might otherwise overlook algal advances, these funds had to be allocated to algae. It was a clear sign of Congress' continued support for our sector's important work.
Indeed, this funding has started to come through, even with the arrival of a new administration that has placed a much lower priority on funding scientific research. In July, The US DOE announced three projects that will receive up to $8 million in funding to further reduce the costs of producing algal biofuels and bioproducts.
ABO members Global Algae Innovations (San Diego, CA), Sapphire Energy (San Diego, CA), and Lumen Bioscience (Seattle, WA) were each chosen to receive funding, alongside Los Alamos National Lab, Sandia National Lab, NREL, and the University of California.
Earlier in the year, ABO members at the University of Kentucky were among the winners of a $5.9 million investment by the DOE's Office of Fossil Energy in projects around the country that will explore how to capture, and make us of, CO2 from coal-fired power plants. Algae, with their phenomenal growth reads and ready appetites for CO2, will certainly play a role in how we address climate change.
The DOE is not the only agency funding algae research and technology development this year. However, significant cuts to the support that goes to many universities, labs, and commercialization projects have been proposed. One proposal would even eliminate entire offices, such as the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
We hope that the US's leadership position in scientific and technological progress can continue. Keeping Congress informed about science and the benefits it has for society and the nation has never been more important.
Real-World Results
The benefits of the research in these pages will extend beyond the scientific and technological. Already, the current body of algae research provides us with a remarkable understanding of how to cultivate, harvest, and process algae at large scales. We now have the basis for a new type of agriculture. Algae are now being cultivated with advanced technologies to provide a growing diversity of products that have never been available before.
While we may still be waiting for the scales required to make algae-based fuels, we are beginning to get a glimpse of the future.
Fish Feed
Aquaculture is witnessing a record number of new entrants from advanced algae applications. This past year Royal DSM (Herleen, Netherlands) and Evonik (Essen, Germany) announced a joint venture to build a $200-million facility to produce an omega-3 salmon feed product from algae. The facility, coming online in 2019, will be constructed on an existing Evonik site in the US.
Lerøy Seafood Group, the leading exporter of seafood from Norway and the world's second largest producer of Atlantic salmon, recently announced the use of TerraVia's (South San Francisco, CA) AlgaPrime™ DHA in aqua feed to enhance the sustainability and omega-3 profile of salmon. In addition, Ventisqueros, SA, a leading Chilean salmon farmer, announced they are also using AlgaPrime™ DHA in the feed for their Silverside™ Premium Pacific salmon. These formulations dramatically reduce the number of wild fish that must be harvested to produce their farmed salmon.
And Heliae (Gilbert, AZ) has announced an exclusive distribution agreement with Syndel Laboratories to supply the aquaculture market with Nymega, a new DHA precision formulation ingredient for feed formulators.
These announcements herald a new era for algae and aquaculture feeds. Algae-based feeds and additives can be produced with less water and land inputs than other crops, and they can dramatically reduce the need for overtaxing fish stocks in the ocean that are already under stress.
Nutrition
Feed markets are high-volume applications for algae cultivation and processing technologies, but perhaps of greater interest to consumers will be algae that is directly part of what we eat. Here too, algae technologies are beginning to have an impact.
Qualitas Health, a Houston, Texas-based nutrition company announced this year an expansion deal that will triple its algae production capabilities and position its omega-3-rich products as a more sustainable alternative to nutrients derived from fish and animals. They join a number of other companies that are offering omega-3s from algae to consumer markets.
Proteins are also beginning to hit the market. New Wave Foods, a biotech company based in San Francisco, California, has created a sustainable replacement for shrimp through a combination of algae and plant-based proteins. New Wave Foods is differentiating their product by emphasizing some of the advantages that will be familiar to anybody familiar with algae. Their shrimp can be a source of nutrition that requires no fishing, no nets, no mangroves and can be sustainably produced.
Water Treatment
Algae applications in water treatment have been expanding at a breakneck rate. One particularly interesting model comes from CLEARAS Water Recovery (Missoula, MT), which recently announced that the South Davis Sewer District just outside Salt Lake City will soon be using the company's advanced algae-based nutrient recovery technology at a 4,000,000 gallon per day water treatment plant. Their process consumes CO2, delivers clean water, and produces algal biomass for a number of applications.
Fuels
Some believe progress toward fuels made from algae has become elusive, yet this perspective is largely a result of low oil prices, not a slowdown in breakthroughs. And even the largest fuel companies are still vested in algae. Exxon Mobil Corp and Synthetic Genomics (La Jolla, CA) announced this year a new breakthrough that can double the production of lipids in algae, with little effect on growth rates. The new findings are an important step to finding ways for algae to become a source of energy that does not compete with food, water resources, or have such negative impacts on the climate as fossil fuels.
Building a New Agriculture
These advances would not have been possible without the kind of research reported in these pages. In fact, a future discussion of how far the algae industry has come will no doubt reference some of the research you will read today.
The world is full of challenges that algae technologies can solve, but only if we continue to push the envelope and transform these remarkable organisms into a new industrial sector. Algae farming will become a job of the future—and is already a job for many—for the simple reason that so many problems are demanding solutions. Global populations are projected to grow to 8 billion within the next couple of decades, and current agricultural technologies, resources, and policies will be stretched to cope.
The demand for proteins will skyrocket, and the way the world raises crops, livestock, and fisheries will have to adapt. Fossil fuels as a source of energy, fertilizer, and chemicals will be compromised by both resource constraints and technology development.
Algae-based proteins and oils, whether used for feed or human consumption, will play a role. How quickly we can meet these challenges will depend on the resources we deploy toward research, commercialization projects, and partnerships between public entities and the private sector.
Each author in this issue is making contributions to a remarkably powerful field of knowledge. A new field of agriculture is being built upon their shoulders, and the future will be grateful.