CleanTech Brief – GreenFuel Algae Company Calls It Quits:
GreenFuel Technologies, the Harvard-MIT algae company, is ending operations.
“We are closing doors. We are a victim of the economy,” Duncan McIntyre at Polaris Venture Partners, which invested in Greenfuel, told Greentech Media.
The closing comes despite millions of dollars raised – over $70 million in venture funding since its inception in 2001, from investors, including Polaris, Access Private Equity and Draper Fisher Jurvetson – and a deal with Auranta to build test facilities in Spain. GreenFuel says it could not get the funding to complete the project. In January, it laid off half its staff – 19 people.
Meanwhile…
Ace of Spades – Congressmen Demand ‘Biofuels’, Science Be Damned:
In a nutshell, the EPA in 2007, after enabling legislation by Congress, issued rules about how to count the greenhouse gas emissions produced during the production of biofuels. One of those rules required that the agency consider indirect land use when calculating the emissions associated with biofuels. But it turns out that if you calculate emissions in this manner, biofuels actually produce more emissions than plain old gasoline.
The Democrats (and greedy, faithless, pathetic worms like Republican Frank Lucas from my former district in Oklahoma) have an easy solution: we just won’t count indirect land use! Science be damned, they want biofuels and they’re not going to take “no” for an answer.
Previously
- Ethanol production creates 15% of Iowa’s greenhouse gases
- Time Magazine, Paul Krugman Admit Biofuels are Snake Oil
- Rolling Stone: “Ethanol Scam: Ethanol Hurts the Environment And Is One of America’s Biggest Political Boondoggles”
- Oil sands petroleum extraction is already profitable