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Editorial

Editorial Algae innovation

The use of algae as an alternative of fossil fuel for the production

of fuel and bulk chemicals has attracted worldwide attention in re-

cent years. The number of algal venture businesses have been

growing in Europe and USA, because it has been widely recognized

that algae have enormous potential for oil production: 10100

times higher oil production rate than terrestrial oil-crops such as

rapeseeds and oil palms, and that, unlike corn and sugarcane, they

are totally non-competitive with food production. Algal technology

is still immature in the world, but because of such incredible po-

tential, algae will grow to a new big market in the future.

Asia-Oceania nations are expected to be the engine of the devel-

opment of the world economy in the 21st century and would

thereby become a mega energy consumption area in the world.

In view of the problems of fuel subsidies and the reduction of car-

bon dioxide emissions, the promotion of the algal industry, includ-

ing production of petroleum, is regarded to be the most important

issue of this region.

In the USA and European countries, private companies seem to

have played a central role in the promoting of algal industries with

strong backup from venture capitals. The situation seems to be alittle different in Asia-Oceania region. Governmental, industrial

and academic sectors are involved with moderate cooperation to

promote algal industry. Cooperation between these sectors seems

to be a common and promising way in this region to develop the

new industry. Therefore it is urgently needed to make more effi-

cient cooperation of these sectors to accelerate promoting algal

industry in this region.

The 1st Asia Oceania Algae Innovation Summit was held at

1314 December 2010 in the University Hall, University of

Tsukuba, Japan with 247 participants from governmental, indus-

trial and academic sectors in Asia-Oceania region and several from

Germany, Netherlands, UK and USA for mutually understanding

stand points for R&D policy making and technological situations

of each sectors and nations. The summit was composed of govern-

ment, industry and academia sessions. An academia session for

research papers was set for scientific information exchange among

participants, sectors and nations. Among 70 oral and poster papers

in the academia session, 14 excellent papers are published in the

special issue on algae innovation after peer-reviews.

Guest Editors

Makoto M. Watanabe

Kunimitsu Kaya

Isao InouyeFaculty of Life and Environmental Sciences,

University of Tsukuba,

Japan

0960-8524/$ - see front matter 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2012.02.031

Bioresource Technology 109 (2012) 244

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Bioresource Technology

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2012.02.031http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2012.02.031http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09608524http://www.elsevier.com/locate/biortechhttp://www.elsevier.com/locate/biortechhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09608524http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2012.02.031http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2012.02.031