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Sea6 Energy to substitute fossil fuel with greener seaweed biofuel
Ocean farming startup Sea6 Energy says seaweed can replace costly imported crude oil with enough research, production scale and investment.
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em>Indonesia, like many countries in the world, is struggling to strike a balance between fossil fuels like crude oil, which is relatively more affordable and abundant, and the urge to pursue net-zero emission targets by transition toward renewable energy, which still has a high cost and not enough scale for a significant shift.
Ocean farming start-up Sea6 Energy cofounder and chief technology officer Nelson Vadassery spoke to The Jakarta Post’s Billy Adison Aditijanto on Jan. 27 about a vision to use seaweed as an alternative form of biofuel to massively reduce reliance on fossil fuel, and how soon it can be ready to enter Indonesian market.
Questions: Why has biofuel made from seaweed stagnated at the research stage?
Answer: Everyone has been struggling with the cost and scale of biomass. When you are talking about replacing crude oil with bio-crude from seaweed, it is a huge volume game, which currently also comes at huge costs.
To make seaweed viable as biofuel, the cost of biomass needs to arrive at about US$100 (Rp 1.5 million) per tonne. However, the cost of biomass is currently way above thousands of US dollars per tonne.
If we could grow a lot more of it with the right production price, that's when biofuel made from seaweed would become a reality.
Another obstacle is the productivity per farmer in a seaweed cultivation is really low. We are in the stone age of seaweed agriculture.
We are not limited by space like on land, but how much we can farm in the sea. The only technology a farmer has is their boat engine, whereas there is a leap in land agriculture with its combine harvester.
We can increase productivity by mechanizing seaweed farming, but then we still need to make seaweed produce yield more.
To grow better crops on land, you can shop for seeds or the government can give you some better seeds; but for seaweed, it does not exist yet.
How does the biofuel from seaweed compare to other sources of biofuel?
When you are working with cassava and corn, for example, you are competing in the food versus fuel debate. With the agricultural land declining, like in India, we want to make sure the land goes for food to feed our large population.
With seaweed, you do not need to worry about land and cutting down forests for agricultural use. We did a calculation that shows the agriculture land we need in India to replace our crude oil imports with biofuel crops is equal to the size of an entire state.
When you go into the sea, you do not compete for fresh water, which is massively needed by land agriculture.
Moreover, the agricultural runoff coming from land to the sea, which is considered a pollutant, can be absorbed by seaweed, allowing it to clean the ocean in the process.
Bio-crude from seaweed can be sent to any existing refinery without much change in the process and then fracked into whatever fractions you need for marine to aviation fuel.
Could this ever be implemented on a national scale?
It can, but the current scale of seaweed production is still too small, while the percentage of coastline used for seaweed production is so far miniscule.
We actually do not have to go into waters thousands of meters deep. You can go 100 m in and still be producing enough seaweed.
It’s also very strategic that we are in the tropics, because not only is there a maximum amount of sunlight, there also are not any significant changes between summer and winter.
As there is not a start and end season to seaweed, you can create a stable employment opportunity that you would not get on land.
Seaweed has a huge potential, but why it is not happening yet? We often look for solutions from the outside instead of thinking a solution can arise from within. Plus, it is not in the mainstream like palm oil, which is why, currently, most investors have not looked into seaweed yet.
How big is the scale of your business in Indonesia and when can we expect to see seaweed biofuel enter the Indonesian market?
Maybe by 2025, because we are doing the production and source our seaweeds in Indonesia.
As a company, we are open to any petrochemical companies or partners who would be interested in our biofuel products.
For our operation in Indonesia, we have invested between Rp 70 and 80 billion to this date and there may be more in the future, because farming seaweed at the scale of biofuel use will require hundreds of square kilometers, and that would require a lot of investment.
Right now, we are still operating in Bali and East Java, as that’s where our offices are. Next, we plan to expand to Kalimantan and West Nusa Tenggara.
-- The writer is an intern with The Jakarta Post.
