Solar Fuel From Joule

Joule, a Cambridge Mass. company, has invented what they call "Solar Fuel." This solar fuel is made up from "highly engineered organisms that harness sunlight and convert CO2 directly into Solar Fuel liquid energy." At the same time, this fuel avoids what typical Biomass Biofuels (corn) use which is lots of agricultural land and water. Joule's Solar Fuel uses minimal non-agricultural land and no fresh water in their process.

Joule has implemented solar converters into their process of engineering these highly synthetic organisms. Their process can produce 20,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year at around $50 per barrel including existing subsidies.

After 2 years of refining their process, Joule will debut their "Solar Ethanol" next year. Then a different process-finding investors that will take them to an industrial scale with strategic funding. They've also applied for a U.S. Department of Energy grant that deals with "high risk, high payoff concepts."

They say they are getting close to widespread production of their solar fuel and want it to come in around less than $50 a barrel.

The closing words on one of the pages on their site says "Coming Soon: Energy Crisis Solved."

Read more at Boston.com.

Read more about this liquid solar fuel at Joule!