Oil giant Exxon Mobil is dropping its support for a number of algae projects after more than a decade of touting the sector as the future of environmentally friendly fuels, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Exxon has slashed its support for Viridos, a biotech company based in California, that operated as the oil giant’s key partner since it began its algae push in 2009, said Bloomberg.
With Exxon funding drying up and difficulty finding other backers, the biotech firm laid off 60 percent of its staff on Dec. 27, Viridos executives told Bloomberg.
The oil giant also halted funding for an algae project at the Colorado School of Mines at the end of last year, after supporting the work for eight years.
"At this point we have other programs that are ready for deployment," Vijay Swarup, Exxon’s senior director of technology who ran algae research, told Bloomberg.
“We need to get on the deployment curve for carbon capture, for hydrogen, for biofuels. Algae still needs some more work.”
Exxon’s fellow oil giants Shell, BP, and Chevron all had, at one point, investments in the sector, but as other renewable energy technologies have become less expensive, algae has fallen by the wayside.
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