Tech visionary joins algae startup
Bob Metcalfe, the man who co-invented Ethernet networking while at Xerox PARC and founded networking giant 3Com Corp., has taken on the position of CEO at algae-to-biofuel startup GreenFuel Technologies. The company has reportedly run into difficulty trying to commercialize its system for growing algae with power plant CO2 emissions and then converting the green stuff into biofuels. Metcalfe, a partner with Polaris Venture Partners (an investor in GreenFuel) and a board member, has joined the company on an interim basis and replaced former CEO Cary Bullock. I interviewed Bullock about 18 months ago for a column and have done a couple of posts on this intriguing company. The idea of growing algae with CO2 emissions and then harvesting it for biofuel is an attractive one because it solves a lot of problems, but I’m not surprised GreenFuel has faced some technical hurdles. That said, Metcalfe brings some solid credibility to the company, and I think it would be foolish to believe a giant algae farm could be designed from scratch without any initial hiccups. I’m keeping my fingers crossed on this one.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:32 am
I wish him luck. The claimed per-acre yields of oil from algae are spectactular, but the economics of enclosed photobioreactors is a very long way from competitive.
This case study of the GreenFuel approach isn’t encouraging:
http://www.nanostring.net/Algae/CaseStudy.pdf