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Some years ago, I set out to try to understand

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if there was a possibility to develop biofuels

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on a scale that would actually compete with fossil fuels

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but not compete with agriculture for water,

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fertilizer or land.

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So here's what I came up with.

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Imagine that we build an enclosure where we put it

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just underwater, and we fill it with wastewater

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and some form of microalgae that produces oil,

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and we make it out of some kind of flexible material

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that moves with waves underwater,

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and the system that we're going to build, of course,

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will use solar energy to grow the algae,

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and they use CO2, which is good,

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and they produce oxygen as they grow.

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The algae that grow are in a container that

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distributes the heat to the surrounding water,

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and you can harvest them and make biofuels

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and cosmetics and fertilizer and animal feed,

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and of course you'd have to make a large area of this,

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so you'd have to worry about other stakeholders

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like fishermen and ships and such things, but hey,

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we're talking about biofuels,

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and we know the importance of potentially getting

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an alternative liquid fuel.

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Why are we talking about microalgae?

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Here you see a graph showing you the different types

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of crops that are being considered for making biofuels,

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so you can see some things like soybean,

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which makes 50 gallons per acre per year,

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or sunflower or canola or jatropha or palm, and that

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tall graph there shows what microalgae can contribute.

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That is to say, microalgae contributes between 2,000

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and 5,000 gallons per acre per year,

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compared to the 50 gallons per acre per year from soy.

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So what are microalgae? Microalgae are micro --

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that is, they're extremely small, as you can see here

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a picture of those single-celled organisms

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compared to a human hair.

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Those small organisms have been around

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for millions of years and there's thousands

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of different species of microalgae in the world,

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some of which are the fastest-growing plants on the planet,

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and produce, as I just showed you, lots and lots of oil.

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Now, why do we want to do this offshore?

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Well, the reason we're doing this offshore is because

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if you look at our coastal cities, there isn't a choice,

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because we're going to use waste water, as I suggested,

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and if you look at where most of the waste water

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treatment plants are, they're embedded in the cities.

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This is the city of San Francisco, which has 900 miles

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of sewer pipes under the city already,

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and it releases its waste water offshore.

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So different cities around the world treat their waste water

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differently. Some cities process it.

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Some cities just release the water.

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But in all cases, the water that's released is

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perfectly adequate for growing microalgae.

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So let's envision what the system might look like.

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We call it OMEGA, which is an acronym for

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Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae.

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At NASA, you have to have good acronyms.

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So how does it work? I sort of showed you how it works already.

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We put waste water and some source of CO2

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into our floating structure,

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and the waste water provides nutrients for the algae to grow,

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and they sequester CO2 that would otherwise go off

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into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.

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They of course use solar energy to grow,

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and the wave energy on the surface provides energy

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for mixing the algae, and the temperature

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is controlled by the surrounding water temperature.

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The algae that grow produce oxygen, as I've mentioned,

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and they also produce biofuels and fertilizer and food and

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other bi-algal products of interest.

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And the system is contained. What do I mean by that?

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It's modular. Let's say something happens that's

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totally unexpected to one of the modules.

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It leaks. It's struck by lightning.

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The waste water that leaks out is water that already now

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goes into that coastal environment, and

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the algae that leak out are biodegradable,

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and because they're living in waste water,

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they're fresh water algae, which means they can't

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live in salt water, so they die.

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The plastic we'll build it out of is some kind of

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well-known plastic that we have good experience with, and

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we'll rebuild our modules to be able to reuse them again.

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So we may be able to go beyond that when thinking about

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this system that I'm showing you, and that is to say

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we need to think in terms of the water, the fresh water,

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which is also going to be an issue in the future,

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and we're working on methods now

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for recovering the waste water.

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The other thing to consider is the structure itself.

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It provides a surface for things in the ocean,

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and this surface, which is covered by seaweeds

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and other organisms in the ocean,

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will become enhanced marine habitat

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so it increases biodiversity.

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And finally, because it's an offshore structure,

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we can think in terms of how it might contribute

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to an aquaculture activity offshore.

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So you're probably thinking, "Gee, this sounds

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like a good idea. What can we do to try to see if it's real?"

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Well, I set up laboratories in Santa Cruz

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at the California Fish and Game facility,

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and that facility allowed us to have big seawater tanks

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to test some of these ideas.

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We also set up experiments in San Francisco

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at one of the three waste water treatment plants,

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again a facility to test ideas.

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And finally, we wanted to see where we could look at

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what the impact of this structure would be

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in the marine environment, and we set up a field site

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at a place called Moss Landing Marine Lab

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in Monterey Bay, where we worked in a harbor

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to see what impact this would have on marine organisms.

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The laboratory that we set up in Santa Cruz was our skunkworks.

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It was a place where we were growing algae

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and welding plastic and building tools

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and making a lot of mistakes,

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or, as Edison said, we were

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finding the 10,000 ways that the system wouldn't work.

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Now, we grew algae in waste water, and we built tools

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that allowed us to get into the lives of algae

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so that we could monitor the way they grow,

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what makes them happy, how do we make sure that

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we're going to have a culture that will survive and thrive.

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So the most important feature that we needed to develop were these

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so-called photobioreactors, or PBRs.

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These were the structures that would be floating at the

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surface made out of some inexpensive plastic material

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that'll allow the algae to grow, and we had built lots and lots

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of designs, most of which were horrible failures,

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and when we finally got to a design that worked,

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at about 30 gallons, we scaled it up

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to 450 gallons in San Francisco.

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So let me show you how the system works.

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We basically take waste water with algae of our choice in it,

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and we circulate it through this floating structure,

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this tubular, flexible plastic structure,

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and it circulates through this thing,

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and there's sunlight of course, it's at the surface,

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and the algae grow on the nutrients.

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But this is a bit like putting your head in a plastic bag.

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The algae are not going to suffocate because of CO2,

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as we would.

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They suffocate because they produce oxygen, and they

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don't really suffocate, but the oxygen that they produce

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is problematic, and they use up all the CO2.

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So the next thing we had to figure out was how we could

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remove the oxygen, which we did by building this column

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which circulated some of the water,

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and put back CO2, which we did by bubbling the system

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before we recirculated the water.

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And what you see here is the prototype,

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which was the first attempt at building this type of column.

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The larger column that we then installed in San Francisco

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in the installed system.

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So the column actually had another very nice feature,

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and that is the algae settle in the column,

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and this allowed us to accumulate the algal biomass

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in a context where we could easily harvest it.

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So we would remove the algaes that concentrated

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in the bottom of this column, and then we could

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harvest that by a procedure where you float the algae

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to the surface and can skim it off with a net.

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So we wanted to also investigate what would be the impact

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of this system in the marine environment,

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and I mentioned we set up this experiment at a field site

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in Moss Landing Marine Lab.

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Well, we found of course that this material became

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overgrown with algae, and we needed then to develop

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a cleaning procedure, and we also looked at how

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seabirds and marine mammals interacted, and in fact you

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see here a sea otter that found this incredibly interesting,

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and would periodically work its way across this little

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floating water bed, and we wanted to hire this guy

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or train him to be able to clean the surface

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of these things, but that's for the future.

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Now really what we were doing,

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we were working in four areas.

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Our research covered the biology of the system,

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which included studying the way algae grew,

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but also what eats the algae, and what kills the algae.

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We did engineering to understand what we would need

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to be able to do to build this structure,

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not only on the small scale, but how we would build it

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on this enormous scale that will ultimately be required.

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I mentioned we looked at birds and marine mammals

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and looked at basically the environmental impact

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of the system, and finally we looked at the economics,

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and what I mean by economics is,

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what is the energy required to run the system?

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Do you get more energy out of the system

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than you have to put into the system

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to be able to make the system run?

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And what about operating costs?

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And what about capital costs?

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And what about, just, the whole economic structure?

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So let me tell you that it's not going to be easy,

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and there's lots more work to do in all four

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of those areas to be able to really make the system work.

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But we don't have a lot of time, and I'd like to show you

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the artist's conception of how this system might look

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if we find ourselves in a protected bay

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somewhere in the world, and we have in the background

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in this image, the waste water treatment plant

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and a source of flue gas for the CO2,

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but when you do the economics of this system,

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you find that in fact it will be difficult to make it work.

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Unless you look at the system as a way to treat waste water,

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sequester carbon, and potentially for photovoltaic panels

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or wave energy or even wind energy,

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and if you start thinking in terms of

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integrating all of these different activities,

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you could also include in such a facility aquaculture.

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So we would have under this system a shellfish aquaculture

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where we're growing mussels or scallops.

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We'd be growing oysters and things

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that would be producing high value products and food,

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and this would be a market driver as we build the system

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to larger and larger scales so that it becomes, ultimately,

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competitive with the idea of doing it for fuels.

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So there's always a big question that comes up,

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because plastic in the ocean has got a really bad reputation

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right now, and so we've been thinking cradle to cradle.

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What are we going to do with all this plastic that we're

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going to need to use in our marine environment?

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Well, I don't know if you know about this,

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but in California, there's a huge amount of plastic

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that's used in fields right now as plastic mulch,

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and this is plastic that's making these tiny little greenhouses

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right along the surface of the soil, and this provides

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warming the soil to increase the growing season,

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it allows us to control weeds,

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and, of course, it makes the watering much more efficient.

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So the OMEGA system will be part

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of this type of an outcome, and that when we're finished

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using it in the marine environment, we'll be using it,

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hopefully, on fields.

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Where are we going to put this,

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and what will it look like offshore?

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Here's an image of what we could do in San Francisco Bay.

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San Francisco produces 65 million gallons a day

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of waste water. If we imagine a five-day retention time

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for this system, we'd need 325 million gallons

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to accomodate, and that would be about 1,280 acres

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of these OMEGA modules floating in San Francisco Bay.

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Well, that's less than one percent

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of the surface area of the bay.

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It would produce, at 2,000 gallons per acre per year,

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it would produce over 2 million gallons of fuel,

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which is about 20 percent of the biodiesel,

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or of the diesel that would be required in San Francisco,

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and that's without doing anything about efficiency.

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Where else could we potentially put this system?

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There's lots of possibilities.

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There's, of course, San Francisco Bay, as I mentioned.

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San Diego Bay is another example,

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Mobile Bay or Chesapeake Bay, but the reality is,

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as sea level rises, there's going to be lots and lots

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of new opportunities to consider. (Laughter)

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So what I'm telling you about is a system

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of integrated activities.

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Biofuels production is integrated with alternative energy

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is integrated with aquaculture.

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I set out to find a pathway

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to innovative production of sustainable biofuels,

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and en route I discovered that what's really required

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for sustainability is integration more than innovation.

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Long term, I have great faith

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in our collective and connected ingenuity.

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I think there is almost no limit to what we can accomplish

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if we are radically open

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and we don't care who gets the credit.

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Sustainable solutions for our future problems

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are going to be diverse

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and are going to be many.

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I think we need to consider everything,

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everything from alpha to OMEGA.

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Thank you. (Applause)

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(Applause)

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Chris Anderson: Just a quick question for you, Jonathan.

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Can this project continue to move forward within

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NASA or do you need some very ambitious

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green energy fund to come and take it by the throat?

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Jonathan Trent: So it's really gotten to a stage now

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in NASA where they would like to spin it out into something

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which would go offshore, and there are a lot of issues

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with doing it in the United States because of limited

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permitting issues and the time required to get permits

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to do things offshore.

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It really requires, at this point, people on the outside,

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and we're being radically open with this technology

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in which we're going to launch it out there

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for anybody and everybody who's interested

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to take it on and try to make it real.

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CA: So that's interesting. You're not patenting it.

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You're publishing it.

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JT: Absolutely.

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CA: All right. Thank you so much.

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JT: Thank you. (Applause)