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Significant recent changes in global climate have launched a massive internationalresearch effort to observe, understand, and predict climate (IPCC 2001a). Unprecedented anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are probably the causeof recent climate change. All indications are that, if left unchecked, acceleratinggreenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during this century will likely lead to even moredramatic changes in the Earth’s climate system. Mitigation strategies have therefore574 M.E. HUNTLEY AND D.G. REDALJEbecome a focus of intensive research, and the principal goal of international environmental policy (UNFCC 1997).In 1996, the IPCC began a major initiative to understand future GHG emissionsin the absence of any specific policies to mitigate climate change; this resultedin the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES; Nakicenovic et al. 2000)that established six basic groups of scenarios. Modelers from around the worldwere then invited to quantify the impact of a broad variety of mitigation scenarios,resulting in a comparison of multiple “post-SRES mitigation scenarios” (Moritaet al. 2000). The post-SRES models were all focused on stabilizing atmosphericCO2 at a specified concentration.We highlight two important features of the post-SRES models. First, the lowestCO2 stabilization target considered by most of the mitigation models is 450 ppm.This is more than 80 ppm greater than the current concentration, a value whichhas very likely not been exceeded in the past 20 million years (Pearson and Palmer
2000). Second, the modeled mitigation strategies employ a wide variety of options,
ranging from those that result in net negative costs, such as improved, energyconserving design of buildings and appliances, to potentially costly and technologically challenging replacement of fossil fuel by a variety of energy sources.
Biological strategies are generally considered to be just one element of mitigation. For example, the Second Assessment Report (IPCC 1995) concluded that
biological mitigation options could offset 10–20% of projected fossil fuel emissions
by 2050. A recent review of 17 studies that evaluate the contribution of biomass to
the future world energy supply underscores the point that renewable energy from
biomass is usually considered to be only one of many components of an overall
mitigation strategy, most of which include continuing reliance on fossil fuels to
some degree (Berndes et al. 2003). Studies that specify a complete phasing out of
fossil fuels by 2100 (e.g. Lazarus et al. 1993; Yamamoto et al. 1999) explicitly
include biofuels as one energy source, but assume these will be derived entirely
from terrestrial plants and exclude any consideration of photosynthetic microbes.
Research and technology development on the production of biofuels from photosynthetic microbes began intensively in the 1980s and continues today. Most
of the published evaluations suggest that microbial-based biofuel processes may
not be achievable with current technology. One of the most intensive publicly
funded research programs to study the feasibility of microbial-based biofuels, the
Aquatic Species Program (ASP) of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), invested more than US$25 million over a period of 20 years
and terminated in the late 1990s; the ASP concluded that economical production
of biofuels from photosynthetic microbes was not likely to be feasible (Sheehan
et al. 1998). The coauthors of this paper are cofounders of a marine biotechnology company that, in the 4 years from 1998 to 2001, invested US$20 million to
conduct research on the same topic. Our findings, based on large-scale pilot operations, came to a different conclusion. We report these findings here for the first
time.
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