Interview with FUEL Director Josh Tickell

Imagine that in less than ten years, the car you are currently driving may be running on algae biofuels? According to FUEL director Josh Tickell, this is very conceivable.

LivingECO.com's Ken Spector caught up with Josh during his promotion of the new DVD release of his award winning film FUEL. One of the most exciting features on the DVD, as Tickell stated, is how to get 150 miles per gallon from your Prius. Josh has been driving his 150mpg Algaeus (Algae-powered plug-in Prius) since 2009.

Tickell touched on the BP oil spill in the Gulf, and stated that the spill is far worse than the media has portrayed the disaster. "We have a situation that may never truly never go out of the ecosystem", says Tickell. He described how the current BP oil spill crisis has been handled by the government as "Nothing short of negligence... and corruption... really criminal behavior."

Tickell discussed the fact that due to tremendous population increases throughout the world, the demand for petroleum is skyrocketing to a point where we must rapidly convert over to sustainable energy sources like solar, wind, and algae liquid fuel energy. "There is physically not enough oil on the planet. We will have a major human catastrophe if we don't start looking, not just at efficiency, but we're gonna need liquid fuel, and algae is the only place we can get it".

Algae fuel companies like Sapphire Energy are poised to be the next big fuel providers. Tickell stated that algae fuel producing companies have gone from just a "handful of companies to now over 800 companies in the space. It looks like it could be a trillion dollar industry within the next decade."

Tickell discussed how algae biofuels can help to clean up the planet. If algae is grown for fuel in the desert, the growing algae would use human and other waste streams as food, sequester CO2 gasses from the environment, and, as Tickell stated, algae growth even seeds clouds, "so it starts to regenerate an ecosystem (in the desert) that may have once existed in that area".

Tickell feels that if the current growth rate of the algae fuel sector continues over the next 5 years, algae biofuel will be a commercial fuel, and if the growth rate continues over the next ten years, it will be a public fuel.

What can we do now to help to get algae based fuels into our gas stations sooner? Tickell stated that there are three ways we help expedite the process. 1. Make sure your senator is part of the Algae Caucus in Washington D.C. by writing a letter. 2. Make sure your next car is a plug-in model. 3. Live where your work and work where you live.

Tickell will be discussing the "urbanism movement", or redesigning cities so that we live closer to that which our lifestyles dictate in the documentary he is currently working on called SPILL, which also details the issues surrounding the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Check out the complete interview.