Shell invest in Biofuel....

Shell invest in Biofuel over wind, solar and hydro power.

Shell have released that they will no longer be investing in alternative energy supplies and instead favour the business opportunity within Biofuels.

The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of using fossil fuels, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. It hoped to use CCS to reduce emissions from Shell’s controversial and energy-intensive oil sands projects in northern Canada.

Linda Cook, Shell’s executive director of gas and power, said: "If there aren’t investment opportunities which compete with other projects we won’t put money into it. We are businessmen and women. If there were renewables [which made money] we would put money into it."

Shell, already the world’s largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generation of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less harmful to the environment.

A research programme with Codexis aims to enhance the Iogen process and shorten the timeline to its full-scale commercial deployment.  Iogen’s technology uses enzymes to break down the cellulose in agricultural fibre and convert it to sugars, which are then fermented and distilled into ethanol.

“In just over two years, our biofuels collaboration with Shell has grown from a pilot project to a significant multifaceted programme to create commercial-scale biofuels from non-food sources,” said Alan Shaw, Ph.D, Codexis President and CEO.  “Codexis has complemented its advanced directed evolution platform with world class technologies ranging from systems biology to large scale enzyme production.  We are very pleased to attract such significant private equity investment.”

For more see www.shell.com