The first international conference on algal energy is taking place in Europe, led by Baltic Sea and California scientists

Algae are among the fastest growing plants in the world, and about 50 percent of their weight is oil that can be used to make biodiesel for cars, trucks, and aircraft, although there are suggestions that different algae are suited to different types of fuel.

Glen Kertz, the president and CEO of Valcent Products outside El Paso in California, has previously said that he can produce about 100,000 gallons of algae oil a year per acre, compared to about 30 gallons per acre from corn or 50 gallons from soybeans.

“Algae is the ultimate in renewable energy,” Kertz told CNN last year.

The conference has been organised by Baltic Sea Solutions and an international scientific team led by Dr. Jonathan Trent, Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Science Lead for the Global Research into Energy and the Environment at NASA.

The ultimate? Why has this taken so long to explore?

Algae tests are not new – the United States Department of Energy looked into the feasibility of algae as a fuel source from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. But the tests were then dropped as oil prices were low, and algae did not seem to be able to compete.

Spiegel Online interviewed a Boeing executive who says Algae Could ‘Supply Entire World with Aviation Fuel’

SPIEGEL ONLINE: One of the major points of concern is land use. Take, for example, jatropha, one possible source of biofuels. How many square kilometres of that plant would actually be necessary to fuel a flight over the Atlantic Ocean?

Glover: Good question, I never figured it out that way. We really do not expect that all of the world’s flights will be fuelled by jatropha plants exclusively.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Than let us talk about algae. How big do these cultures need to be?

Glover: The optimists say, to supply the entire world with aviation fuel, you would perhaps need an area of the size of Belgium. We still need quite a bit of research and development work to really determine whether that is possible. So far, we are very pleasantly surprised by the innovation and the progress.

That is about 12,000 square miles (31,000 sq km) or about the size of the US state of Maryland, which seems like a tiny space in order to fuel all air transportation. I wonder how much total space is dedicated to coal and oil. The Sahara Desert is 8.6 million sq km so there is plenty of room available for such a scheme in a place no one will notice, another nice thing about biofuel compared with oil and coal. This also reminds me of the argument that solar panels in only 0.3 percent of the desert could meet all of Europe’s energy needs.

MIT has pioneered a Virus battery.

Researchers constructed a lithium-ion battery, similar to those used in millions of devices, but one which uses genetically engineered viruses to create the negatively charged anode and positively charged cathode.

The virus is a so-called common bacteriophage which infects bacteria and is harmless to humans.

Amazingly it is already marketed as something that can power cars, which says a lot about demand versus the auto industry. Who killed the electric car, indeed!

It also is nice to see viruses get a good name, given all the negative press that we usually see in technology. Go battery virus go.

I recently read a 58 page report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office from May 2008 related to the Tennessee Valley Authority that calls them vulnerable to disruption by cyber attack:

Until TVA fully implements security program activities, it risks a disruption of its operations as a result of a cyber incident…possibly resulting in loss of life, physical damage, or economic losses.

Apparently only one in four of their workers was given the required security training, while almost nine million people in the Tennessee Valley depend on the TVA for energy. You will often hear me bring up these details in presentations about the NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) standards.

Meanwhile, I just noticed that the first action by President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson is on the TVA for a Coal Ash spill:

The December spill spurred increased attention to coal-waste issues around the country. The 1.1 billion gallons of slurry flooded more than 300 acres of land and damaged homes in the area surrounding the Tennessee Valley Authority pond, and clean-up could cost up to $825 million.

That is ten times the Exxon Valdez spill. What is most amazing about the new direction of the EPA is that it actually seems to be talking about these environmental issues in terms of National Security:

“Environmental disasters like the one last December in Kingston should never happen anywhere in this country,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in a statement. “That is why we are announcing several actions to help us properly protect the families who live near these facilities and the places where they live, work, play and learn.”

After the TVA spill the New York Times ran a “Collapse of the Clean Coal Myth” story last January.

It was an accident waiting to happen and an alarm bell for Congress and federal regulators. Senator Barbara Boxer of California noted that coal combustion in this country produces 130 million tons of coal ash every year — enough to fill a train of boxcars stretching from Washington, D.C., to Australia. Amazingly, the task of regulating the more than 600 landfills and impoundments holding this ash is left to the states, which are more often lax than not.

Compare and contrast the GAO report with the coal ash issues and you start to see how security is really a process and a state of mind influencing behavior more than any particular technology or control. Let’s hope the GAO warnings on Cyber Security, along with the NERC compliance deadlines, give enough traction to TVA security management to prevent an even larger disaster.