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> July 2009
Hi-tech solutions or the simple life?
California's green dream
America is waking up to the reality of peak oil and climate change. In California there are very different responses to the crisis: some pin their hopes on new technology, while others advocate a radical change of lifestyle
by Agnès Sinaï
At the entrance to Silicon Valley, just south of San Francisco, the start-up company Solazyme Inc is chasing a new dream: forget semi-conductors, the Holy Grail of the 21st century is algae-derived diesel that is as powerful as fossil fuel. Solazyme's co-founder and president, Harrison Dillon, says his company "is the only microbe biotechnology company to have created a fuel with the same properties as oil".
The exact process remains secret – Dillon will disclose only that it involves the genetic engineering of marine microbes: we're entering the realm of the third generation of man-made biofuels (1). At the end of 2008 Solazyme announced it had produced an algae-based aviation fuel that remains stable at high altitude. The company has received $75m in capital risk investments. Its aim is to create renewable energy by reducing the 100-million year process by which algae naturally produce oil to only a few days.
In a kind of modern day alchemy, Dillon says it's possible to accelerate the fermentation of algae by feeding them with agricultural residue and other cellulose materials in industrial digesters (2). Algae normally use sunlight to produce oil. However, Solazyme says it has genetically engineered a strain that does not use photosynthesis. The oil produced can be used for combustion, in cooking or in industrial chemicals.
The dream of endless supplies of "green gold" remains some way off. But these green start-ups have no time to waste: their investors want results. Everyone agrees that the days of cheap oil are over. In 2005 the Hirsch Report by SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation), commissioned by the US department of energy, recommended preparing for the transition to other sources of energy before oil production peaks and declines (Peaking of world oil production: impacts, mitigation, & risk management (PDF)). The 21st century will not enjoy the same abundance of energy as the 20th did. Faced with this reality, it is left to the miracle of technology to replace nature's bounty. Silicon Valley sees itself as a future Saudi Arabia, transforming cellulose into ethanol and algae into oil.
Algae have another magical property: they consume carbon dioxide (CO2). So algae could be used to turn industrial CO2 emissions into fuel in "bioreactors" sited near coal-fired power stations (there are 619 in the US). That would kill two birds with one stone – capture carbon emissions and produce fuel.
Environmental amnesia
Sapphire Energy, a competitor of Solazyme, hopes to use this process to produce 455m litres of "green crude" algae fuel a year by 2018. Sapphire – which is supported by Bill Gates and the Rockefeller family – boasts that its fuel can replace oil in existing refinement and distribution infrastructure. The production facility it is building in Las Cruces, New Mexico, will be the first commercial plant producing algae fuel. The only problem is that it could end up costing a billion dollars to produce a quantity of fuel that is tiny in comparison with domestic demand.
David Fridley is a former oil industry executive who is now an energy specialist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He explained: "Ultimately, these kinds of schemes are simply a supplement to fossil fuels, not a replacement, since every stage of their manufacturing is based on fossil fuel usage. The ultimate test for a true renewable is when the output of the fuel can provide the input to its own manufacture." These algae facilities, whether they are enclosed or in the open air, use huge amounts of energy, because of the water they require. Thousands of cubic metres of water are needed to fill them, to keep their temperature constant or replace evaporation. The biggest consumer of electricity in California is the system that pumps water from the north of the state down through the Tehachapi mountains to Los Angeles.
Fridley gazed at the vegetables and vines growing in his little garden of Eden in Sonoma County and said he was worried about the "environmental amnesia" of some of his contemporaries. He complained that they don't seem to understand the vulnerability of our energy system, on which our food production also depends.
The psychology of Californians veers between technological optimism and a sense of doom. The San Andreas fault line runs right across California: a major earthquake partially destroyed San Francisco in 1906, and the state suffers regularly from huge forest fires and drought.
André Angelantoni, co-founder of Post Peak Living, which advises politicians and private individuals on how to prepare for the decline in oil production, doesn't believe technology will be the great provider. He says these Silicon Valley start-ups will never be able to produce a replacement for fossil fuels quickly enough, at competitive prices and in sufficient quantities. He thinks a crash is inevitable: "We are confronted with a series of global problems: financial, energy, climatic – which have already reached such proportions that their consequences can no longer be avoided. Each new problem adds to the one before. It is as if we have been living beyond our means and we are just realising the coffers are empty." Angelantoni suggests we start preparing for the coming crisis and learn to use less energy.
Cultivate your plot
The Post Carbon Institute is a think tank based in the Sonoma town of Sebastopol – a "transition town" (3) working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It brings together economists, biologists and thinkers to ponder a future without oil, particularly for societies that currently depend on fossil fuels for their development. One of its spokesmen is the journalist and writer Richard Heinberg. In Powerdown (4) he argues it is better to make a determined effort to reduce energy consumption than to suffer when cheap fuel runs out. It is especially important to help people adapt and develop strategies for transition in industrial societies like California, which are dependent on depleting energy sources such as fossil fuel and uranium.
Every day, Jason Bradford, a biologist turned IT engineer, collects green waste for his compost from the Mendonesian café, a community restaurant in the main street in Willits, a small town 200km north of San Francisco. A community of 13,500 inhabitants, Willits nestles in an undulating landscape filled with ancient sequoias. The walls in the town are covered in murals by local artists, and by anonymous quotes such as: "Freedom happens when you define it". Bradford could have had a career in Silicon Valley, but he has chosen to put his beliefs into practice, and concentrate his energy at home in his allotments and orchard where he cultivates seeds to grow food for his family. The car is parked in front of the house, while he cycles around the town towing his tools to the vegetable plot.
He edits The Oil Drum, an internet site about energy and a post-carbon world, as well as running the Willits Economic Localisation (Well) association, promoting a more localised economy, less dependent on foreign imports. They get debate going by showing the iconic film The End of Suburbia (5), which questions the sustainability of the suburban lifestyle.
Bradford examined his compost, reinvigorated by earthworms, and said that we needed to change the narrative and replace our negative addiction with a healthy one – like cultivating a garden and looking after the soil, things that have disappeared from the general consciousness: "California has a lot of cognitive dissonance. We have built our societies on a huge ecological debt, which we are paying for in anxiety. Our principal occupation should be restoring what we have pillaged." Or do we need group therapy, as suggested in The Story of Stuff? This animated film exposing the underside of the consumer society has had more than five million downloads.
Marilyn turned up at the allotments. She is coordinator of the Grateful Gleaners, an army of people who harvest crops that would otherwise be wasted, and had come to weed and pick fruit and vegetables to distribute to local schools and charities. She said in times of crisis we must build community cohesion (6).
Urban farmers
But is all this just the educated middle classes playing at being green? In Richmond, a working-class city with a population of 103,000 and a high crime rate on the outskirts of San Francisco, several associations have begun trying to combat mass unemployment by creating green jobs – planting community gardens and producing solar panels. Projects such as Green for All and Solar Richmond are putting into practice a philosophy that Van Jones, President Obama's special adviser for green jobs, would like to see spread more widely.
The crumbling shipyards of this city in the East Bay no longer provide work. Instead there is the Chevron refinery – the second biggest in California, with a capacity of 15 million barrels. It spills toxic waste – chlorine and sulphur dioxide – into the surrounding area. People living nearby suffer from asthma. Hundreds of locals have demonstrated against plans to extend the refinery in a rejection of this eco-apartheid.
The mayor of Richmond, Gayle McLaughlin, is determined to restore a sense of pride to her city. She is counting in part on Obama's stimulus package, passed by Congress in February. Richmond has already received a subsidy of almost $1m to finance alternative energy sources and energy management, and to create green jobs covering communal buildings with solar panels. But the council's attention is focused primarily on Chevron, to the great displeasure of some council members close to the oil giant. In November 2008, after a titanic political battle, the city council passed Measure T by a 51% majority. The measure, supported by a citizens' petition, means polluting, heavy industries such as Chevron, which last year made a profit of $26bn, will be taxed at a much higher rate than the local corner shop.
Groups of unemployed teenagers wandered through Richmond's deserted streets. Could they be the future urban farmers in a network of local food production? "Our communal vegetable plots are springing up all over the city," said McLaughlin. "We even have a group working to get 5% of food consumed here produced locally, to reduce food miles."
People here are experimenting with a new philosophy. The transformation of the East Bay into a green corridor may still be a dream, but there is a movement to look beyond the hi-tech mirages and create a population of happy gardeners.
Agnès Sinaï
Translated by Stephanie Irvine
Agnes Sinai is a journalist
(1) The first generation of biofuel used food crops such as sugar and vegetable oil; the second used waste biomass such as wood or wheat stalks.
(2) Tanks designed to break down substances at high temperatures.
(3) The Transition Network was co-founded in the UK by Rob Hopkins to encourage communities to be less reliant on fossil fuel and to reduce carbon emissions. See Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience, Greenbooks, Totnes, UK, 2008.
(4) Powerdown: Options and actions for a post-carbon world, New Society Publishers, 2004.
(5) The End of Suburbia: Oil depletion and the collapse of the American Dream, directed by Gregory Greene, produced by Barry Silverthorn, 2004.
(6) In the style of "locavore" networks like Eat the View and Food Not Lawns, which advocate the setting up of local seed sharing groups.
français — Mirages verts et sobriété californienne
Deutsch — Pack die Algen in den Tank
Español — Milagros verdes y sobriedad californiana
English — California's green dream
Here is a terrific article you should definitely read: "California's green dream", by Agnès Sinaï (open access, July 2009) // https://mondediplo.com/5378
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