A better way to grow/harvest algae?
An Ottawa-based company called Menova Inc. has teamed up with a Calgary-based natural-gas exploration firm called Trident to develop a CO2-capture system based on algae. Now, this whole CO2-to-algae-to-oil approach isn’t new, and has been discussed several times on this blog, but Menova and Trident believe they’ve come up with a model that suits the changing seasons of Canada (i.e. growing algae in the dead of winter). They’ve also figured out how to reduce the amount of land needed to cultivate the algae.
What’s the secret ingredient? Solar… but you’ll have to read my Clean Break column today to find out what makes their approach so different and potentially more economical.
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.
