Irving,Texas (New York Times) - Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp., whose chief executive once mocked alternative energy by referring to ethanol as "moonshine," is about to venture into biofuels.
On Tuesday, Irving-based Exxon announced an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae – organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.
The agreement could plug a major gap in the strategy of Exxon, the world's largest and richest publicly traded oil company, which has been criticized by environmental groups for dismissing concerns about global warming in the past and its reluctance to develop renewable fuels.
Despite the widely publicized "moonshine" remark a few years ago by Exxon chairman and chief executive Rex Tillerson, the company has spent several years exploring fuel alternatives, according to one of its top research officials.
MILAN (Reuters) - Industrial-scale production of bioenergy from algae, or seaweeds, can be expected in 10 to 15 years, helping Europe to reach its green energy targets, the top official at a newly created bioenergy body said on Wednesday.
Companies around the world are racing to find economic ways to make biofuels from algae, one of the planet's oldest life forms. Such fuels are considered to be net carbon neutral because the algae absorbs greenhouse gases when they grow.
Research into algae-made biofuels has been active in the last 3 to 5 years, but it would take another 10 to 15 years to turn laboratory experiments into industrial-scale production, said Raffaello Garofalo, executive director of the European Algae Biomass Association.
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