Greener skies

NETHERLANDS: Most of the tomatoes produced for export in the Netherlands are grown in greenhouses. Now a Dutch company is also growing algae in its greenhouses, and using them as a source of biofuel.

Algae offer many advantages over other biofuel crops. Using them will not push up food prices, and, as a non-food, they can be grown using wastewater and seawater or in areas where the land is not suitable for farming. Algae are extremely fast-growing, too; their mass can double every few hours.

The firm Algae-Link grows the simple plants in a multilayer system of tubes in the greenhouse. Peter van den Dorpel, head of operations, says that the company’s experience growing tomatoes has provided the know-how needed for the new crop. “It's actually like growing tomatoes; the algae need similar things,” van den Dorpel told the BBC.

"It's actually like growing tomatoes; the algae need similar things."

Once the algae are harvested, the green mass can be sold as fish food and the plant oil is processed into fuel. The company’s ambitious goal is to produce the first bio-diesel for the aviation industry. “We are expanding thousands and thousands of square metres of sites in greenhouses here in Holland and in the open air in the south of Spain and in China,” says van den Dorpel.

• AlgaeLink