Need I repeat myself? Greentech will succeed when and where it’s profitable.

The oil giant Exxon Mobil, whose chief executive once mocked alternative energy by referring to ethanol as “moonshine,” is about to venture into biofuels.

On Tuesday, Exxon plans to announce an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae — organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.

Another venture founded in science and technology that papier-mache pundits lampooned as unrealistic and too far ahead of its time.

Despite the widely publicized “moonshine” remark a few years ago by Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, the company has spent several years exploring various fuel alternatives, according to one of its top research officials.

“We literally looked at every option we could think of, with several key parameters in mind,” said Emil Jacobs, vice president for research and development at Exxon’s research and engineering unit. “Scale was the first. For transportation fuels, if you can’t see whether you can scale a technology up, then you have to question whether you need to be involved at all.”

He added, “I am not going to sugarcoat this — this is not going to be easy.” Any large-scale commercial plants to produce algae-based fuels are at least 5 to 10 years away, Dr. Jacobs said.



Oilgae-powered Mercedes at the Sundance Festival

But if it proves a bona fide effort, Exxon’s move into biofuels, long the preserve of venture capital firms and biotech start-ups, could provide a big push to the Obama administration’s policy of encouraging more renewable energy…

Exxon’s partnership with Synthetic Genomics is also a vote of confidence in the work of Dr. Venter, a maverick scientist best known for decoding the human genome in the 1990s. In recent years, he has focused his attention on a search for micro-organisms that could be turned into fuel…

Algal biofuel, sometimes nicknamed oilgae by environmentalists, is a promising technology. Fuels derived from algae have molecular structures that are similar to petroleum products, including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, and would be compatible with the existing transportation infrastructure, according to Exxon.

It hasn’t been long since Venter just smiled and said something like, “you’ll be hearing about genomic designs in biofuel”.

The analysts who sit back on their rusty-dustys and prattle reactionary crap about digital this can’t succeed; computer modeling achieves nothing; Green alternatives will never be profitable – should think about getting an honest job. Part of the commercial equation is the task of developing a means to make a process or product profitable.

Cripes, most so-called economists and their mirror-images in the two tired political parties still don’t understand the usefulness of basic research, calling into question any project which doesn’t add sugar to their doughnuts within 2 quarters.