The National Algae Association announcde that one of its algae incubator program companies, Natural Algae Production, LLC of Louisiana, has broken ground on a new 10 acre algae farm. NAA believes hundreds of commercial algae farms will be needed going forward to satisfy the many different products made from algae, and that this is an encouraging addition to the algae production community.
\"The algae incubator program is designed to test commercial algae technologies and equipment but also for job training and potential opportunities in the commercial algae production industry\", said Barry Cohen, Executive Director of the National Algae Association, \"and we are already seeing the benefits of the incubators.\"
\"We continue to bridge the gap between commercially-minded algae researchers, commercial algae producers, equipment providers and private industry\", said Cohen. \"After decades of algae research, private industry is focusing on algae technologies that have been proven outside the lab and are scalable for commercial algae farms and indoor algae bio-manufacturing facilities,\"
Recent EPA CO2 mandates have power plants, refineries and cement plants revisiting algae as a potential source to sequester CO2. Commercial closed-loop system s could be co-located on or near power plants to sequester CO2 anywhere in the world. Algae CO2 sequestration technologies are being enhanced every day . NAA sees new working relationships being formed between algae companies on one hand and power plants, refineries and cement plants on the other, all focusing on CO2 sequestration to help meet the government mandate.
With conditions at the Department of Energy\'s Algae Biomass Program and in the banking environment virtually unchanged, the algae production industry is scaling-up production with all private investment from private industry getting into production.
\"It\'s very encouraging however to see more and more private investments coming into the algae production industry, and interesting to note that the people who are really growing aren\'t issuing lofty press releases. After all, someone needs to grow it - for real - and there\'s no shortage of off-take contracts available these days,\" Cohen said.
