jonathan's Comments

www.windfuels.com is not available and is 'a site under construction'

Wow! I never thought they would get this far so soon. Are they very much more expensive than the rest of the offerings out there? Can the design allow for dropping the price much with larger volumes?
when you consider that nature in the form of photosynthesis is only 6% efficient this could be a game changer.

a mudflats wading bird killed off the last effort to promote this so it will be interesting to see if they can get over the environmental hurdles that bog down so many projects here in the UK...

when solar photovotaics become cost effective (?5 years) then you may find the average householder installing them in HUGE numbers like the solar water heaters in israel or greece. Lots of smaller units with no transmission costs may possibly dominate. Perhaps there will be a 'ladder' of electricity generation with nuclear base load, wind and other renewables as intermediate utilities, and domestic solar. All are carbon neutral so helping us with our global warming and all will generate huge amounts of work, investment and earnings. The next investment boom.

I imagine the main problem will be that the algae stick to the surface and eventually block the light from reaching into the tubes. Perhaps a useful area of research would be into how alga adhere to surfaces and is there a way to coat or nano-engineer the surface to prevent adhesion?
As they will be grown in hot sunny areas usually with little spare water it is not possible to grow in open tanks due to evaporative loss.

I suspect that the UK planning laws are a major factor. For a long time Kent were refusing planning permission for the electricity shore station and Uk law allowed them to hold up the entire project. Also doing any business with the current labour government is fraught with trouble as they just are not business oriented and don't understand how to make complex projects work. I think the previous correspondents have been too cynical. The oil companies are all keen to get into green energy and especially windpower because even they can sense the public hostility to the oil industry.

hemp grows beautifully and produces a lot of seed high in oil. I found a field growing near where I live and it smelt beautiful. I made some of it into hash brownies and it tasted good but sadly no high from it....

sounds pretty likely to come online in the next ten years. In the Uk wind power is being badly held up by planning requirments. I wonder if fish farming can be added in using these structures as corner points for attaching nets far out at sea...Food is suddenly becoming very expensive...

wow! real exponential growth! what other area is growing this fast. no wonder the money is pouring in to photovoltaics.

that exponential growth again. this is the first gigawatt deal for photovoltaics....

I have vacuum tubes here in he uk and they have functioned automatically for 18 yeas without problem. the only problem was with the water pump which i replaced myself. They are rather expensive I must admit and without tax breaks are not cost effective unless heating costs increase further. However it is a great feeling to have all the hot water we can use on a sunny day ( and it then gets collected and goes onto the lawn which loves it and produces thick green growth where it has drained...)

wow this is truly impressive! israel leads the way once again and shows the rest of us how a small motivated democracy can really move forwards at a brisk pace. Watch this space....

this is very counterintuitive! how can one extract 30% of a micro-organisms weight in the form of lipids without killing it? More detail would be interesting...

Could we please have more technology/biochemistry information on these new ethanol producing processes. I am sure I am not the only avid reader of this site who is aware that 'ethanol can help reduce oil imports bla bla bla' but what we really want to be kept up to date with is the moving technology. cellulosic ethanol is such a technological challenge that its riveting to  observe how the various approaches develop- is it going to be chemical breakdown or enzymatic or a mix etc.  

I wondered when the big oil money would pour into renewables. Is this the first step or has it been happening surrepticiously for a while now? Looks like renewables will be the next big investment opportunity so I expect the progress to be exponential.