The first stakeholder meeting of the Euro 6 million BioMara project to make biofuel from marine algae takes place today (8 June 2009) at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban, Scotland. Following launch of the project in April by Scotland's Energy Minister Jim Mather this is the first chance for the business community and general public to express views on the projected research.
As fossil fuel supplies dwindle the European Parliament is demanding that 10 per cent of road transport fuel be derived from renewable sources by 2020. Since turning land over to biofuel crops impacts on food production it seems an obvious step to investigate if marine algae can be farmed for conversion into fuel.
Yes, marine algae efficiently convert carbon dioxide into biomass containing exploitable oils and, yes, viewed this way the oceans do offer a vast untapped reservoir of energy. But while politicians trumpet job opportunities and carbon reductions in their urgency to meet European rules it is worth noting that the focus is to be on 'supporting biofuel production and utilisation in remote, rural communities' which translates as unspoiled outer islands largely out of the public gaze.
Vast areas of the seabed will have to be planted with the chosen alga – like conifer plantations on land, entirely artificial and subject to all the weaknesses of a single-species monoculture. Our record with terrestrial agriculture based around such highly managed systems offers no grounds for confidence that marine algal farming for energy production will not unleash ecological disaster on the oceans.
The delicate balance of life in the sea pivots upon the algae. How will the ongoing sowing and reaping of marine algae to make biodiesel impact on this? One wonders what procedures will be in place for the eventuality that an algal crop with big commercial value is attacked by pests. We are still living with the legacy of DDT used on terrestrial crops – how much worse would the fall-out be from experiments with pest control in the sea. And since it seems likely there will be Genetically Modified (GM) seaweeds with optimised oil content one wonders how the spread of such manufactured organisms will be contained in the constantly moving ocean.
Our understanding of seabed ecosystems lags way behind knowledge of the land, and what goes on there is out of sight and out of mind for most of us. Perhaps that is what makes it so attractive for political and commercial exploitation. Short of an oil slick and dead animals washing ashore we have no way of knowing when something has gone wrong.
Could the answer lie not in further gainful blundering in the sea (where we already discharge sewage, bury nuclear waste etc) but in culturing suitable algae on land? The All-Ireland launch for BioMara is scheduled for 17th June in Belfast. Further information at www.biomara.org
Robin Gates
docg8z@talktalk.net
http://thecoastalzone.blogspot.com
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