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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tapcon who wrote (31083)	5/30/2008 12:49:39 PM
From: E_K_S	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78760

Hi Paul - I have been researching different emerging energy technologies that may provide the disruptive change needed to extend the peek oil time line. One company located here in Silicon Valley is Solazyme. They are developing a process to produce bio-diesel from a genetically modified algae. Their prototype algae has a super efficient and fast metabolic rate that produce huge amounts of lipids in both the light and dark. solazyme.com Here is a recent article on Solazyme siliconvalley.com From the article:"... Microscopic, single-celled algae have been around for billions of years. The simplest of plants, they are quite efficient at converting light, water and carbon into oily compounds called lipids that can be extracted and processed into diesel fuel, gasoline, crude oil, even salad dressings and skin creams...." ============================================================== The value proposition is to spread some seed money into a few of these new emerging technologies that become very profitable with diesel at over $5.00/gallon. The article states that they are working on a system that produces diesel for less than $2.00/gallon. These companies could eventually become buy out candidates from several of the older legacy companies (oil and AG) when they are able to deliver such a system. The take away for me with using a genetically engineered algae that produces biofuel is that it can be done locally w/o high tech equipment and at the margin could supply much of the local demand for diesel in many of the developing countries (like China and India). Local production facilities provides local jobs and is environmentally friendly with a neutral carbon foot print. Solazyme (and many other start ups) could be the Monsanto of algae bio fuel production. EKS