This could be ready for “full consumer production” in just five years and “if brought to full-scale production it would enable the United States and other countries to become energy independent.”

The founders of Sapphire were motivated by the question: Why is the biofuel industry spending so much time and energy manufacturing ethanol — a fundamentally inferior fuel? Producing ethanol from slow growing plants like corn requires large amounts of energy, land, and chemical resources while algae double their mass several times in one day using only sunlight and CO2 in the process. These lovely photosynthetic reactors produce 15 times more oil per hectare than alternatives like soy and palm. Algae is also extremely low maintenance, thriving in non-potable water on non-arable land and delivering 10 to 100 times more energy per acre than cropland biofuel.