SeekerBlog

The future of energy is biology. What’s surprising is it took so long to discover something so obvious.



Synthetic Genomics was launched by Craig Venter. BP has invested in the company — which encourages me that the potential for biotechnology to change the energy industry may not be centuries in the future.

One of the Synthetic Genomics founders, Juan Enriquez, writes here on some of the biotech impacts — there is more industrial-scale activity than you might think:

BP recently partnered with Synthetic Genomics to explore various hydrocarbon applications. These technologies become ever more valuable as oil is processed into advanced plastics, textiles or high-end fuels. DuPont sold off its traditional petroleum-based polyester and nylon plants and is now manufacturing its new fabrics using large bacterial reactors. Toyota is developing plants that grow the plastics for use in car dashboards.

The disposable, transparent water cup or lunchtime salad container that you used today could well have been grown in bacteria through a Cargill joint venture. Companies like Greenfuel Technologies are using algae as a substitute fuel for power plants at the same time that they capture greenhouse gases. Understanding microbial processes will be the key to increasing output and achieving greater energy independence while reducing carbon emissions.

In a sense, energy is just about to go through the same transition as agriculture did. The first centuries of intensive agriculture depended mostly on better mechanics and chemistry. Bigger tractors and harvesters, more powerful pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers generated rapid improvements in output.

…Over the next decade, improvements in energy production will likely come to depend far more on understanding the biology of energy than its chemistry. As we grow bugs that like to eat sulfur, it will be a lot easier and cheaper to turn heavy crude into sweet crude. As we understand the microbial communities that lead to differential pressures in wells, we can become far better at extracting oil than by finding one more drilling fluid or learning new ways to fracture wells.

Another opportunity is to utilize engineered bacteria to convert coal seams to syngas in situ rather than mining, burning and cleaning up the stack gases:

What is interesting and promising is that the amount of gas generated by various coal seams varies tremendously. And often the reason has to do more with biology than with chemistry.

If I may be prosaic, as bacteria eat old vegetable matter they produce gas, just like a kid after eating beans. More bacteria equal more gas. Too much gas, with no outlet, and the mine can explode. Biology often determines output.

Because there is a wide variance, one can change the conditions in a given coal seam to increase or decrease gas production. Initial lab results show one might be able to increase coal gas to the point where it might be unnecessary to mine the coal itself. Future U.S. energy security and competitiveness, I maintain, will depend on biology and not just chemistry, which is why new disciplines, like genomics and proteomics, are becoming critical components of any energy bill.

MIT Technology Review interviewed Synthetic Genomics’ president Ari Patrinos, June 27:

Venture Beat has a bit more on Synthetic Genomics’ investors from June 2007:

Synthetic Genomics, the company started by controversial human genome entrepreneur Craig Venter, has raised financing at a whopper valuation even before it has produced its first viable product.

The company, based in Rockville, Md. is using Venter’s background as an expert in sequencing genes and applying it to finding new kinds of alternative energy sources.

The company announced last week that it had raised an undisclosed second round of financing from a group strategic investors, including the oil giant BP. That company’s value after the investment is about “$300 million,” chief executive Venter told VentureWire (sub required).