Sustainable Urban Living: Green Solar Energy for Food and Biofuels Production - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 420

TABLE 24.3
Southwest Environmental Qualities

Need Description West and SW

Sunny days The more the better because algae

grow slower on cloudy days

360 days

Temperature 60°F-110°F 350 days

Few frost days Altitude <1000 ft to minimize frost <1000 ft

5 days of frost

Flat, cheap land Noncropland, undeveloped Hundreds of square

miles of desert

Waste or brine water Algae get nutrients from waste,

brine, lake, or ocean water

Oceans of brine water

Algae are sustainable because growth requires only a tiny fraction of the fossil inputs—
energy, water, land, fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides—required for land-based plants
like corn, citrus, cotton, or cattle. Algae can remediate the nitrogen, phosphorus, and other
pollution from agriculture in groundwater and wastewater, conserve those polluting
nutrients, and reuse them to produced food and energy. Algae production is ecologically
positive because it has minimal input needs and, in closed biofactories where no or few
waste products are produced to leach into the soil, float on the wind or fill waste dumps.

24.8 Green Solar Value Chain
When the challenges of algal production are resolved, hungry, thirsty, and cold people
may share in algae's green promise for sustainable and affordable food and energy (SAFE)
production. Algae are uniquely positioned to provide a value chain of products and
solutions for critical human needs (Figure 24.5). The value chain includes sustainable and
affordable foods for people, fish, fowl, and animals. Algae can provide liquid transportation
fuels such as green diesel and jet fuels that displace fossil fuels and enable communities
and countries to become oil independent. 28
Algae oil burns cleanly with little black smoke particulates because it is a vegetable oil.
Algae grown locally for clean burning oil for cooking and heating fires can end smoke
death and disability for the millions of mothers and children who inhale black smoke par-
ticulates as they cook over wood, coal, or dung. 29
Algae's ability to clean waste and brine water offer a high-value solution for the water-
starved West and Southwest. Israel, which also has arid lands, currently recycles 87% of
its municipal water through algal ponds to clean the water.* Coal fire power plants and
industrial manufacturers can flue their chimney smoke through algal ponds to sequester
the CO 2 and heavy metals, which will improve the quality of living for urban dwellers
downwind from smoke plumes.
Algal biomass production can provide not only valuable freshwater but fodder for
grazing animals. Algal fodder can reduce overgrazing, which can save grasslands and
forests from being denuded. Algal carbohydrates can be used to produce paper which can
save forests or made into biodegradable plastic that does not fill waste dumps. 29

* Personal interview with Israeli algae expert, Professor Amos Richmond, April 2008.