What’s the most popular automotive technology today? If you answered six-pack carbs I want to have your babies, but you would be sadly wrong. Actually, increased fuel mileage technology is the new haute. That’s because apparently we reached peak crude oil production in 2005 and are now resigned to sucking life-giving hydrocarbons from rocks and teenagers’ foreheads. But that won’t be the case if Joule has its way.
Joule, a secretive east coast startup that sadly isn’t creating spontaneous fire-creating Drew Barrymore clones, is, if their website is to be believed, creating hydrocarbon fuel from nothing more than Co2 and sunshine. Yeah, halle-freakin’-lujah. What Joule claims they have created is a custom life form that feeds on CO2  and poops out unleaded, diesel, and the stuff your 747 runs on. Coffee, Tea or Me indeed.
If this all sounds like something Billy Mays may have touted on national TV before going tits-up due to his coke addiction, well, it is. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not real. Joule boasts that their technology will have their designer bugs farting out fuels for as little as $30 a barrel. Thirty bucks! In comparison, dead dino juice – the flow of which is currently controlled by people who mostly despise us, and that we sent Saddam Hussein to dictator heaven for – is currently tracking for damn-near $90 per drum.
Joule says eff that.
The company’s claim is that their custom photosynthetic organisms convert waste CO2 and sunlight into a viable fuel – octane rating TBD. This would of course make our efforts to stabilize the  Middle East moot – hey guys, go nuts! – It would  also mean the Alaska pipeline could be converted to a moose log jammer ride, and that that state would no longer benefit from the $1,000 per resident bonus they all get. You know who’s gettin’ screwed? Juneau!
Of course, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, there is no free lunch, caveat emptor, etc, and the oil industry and their political allies would never let something like this exist without someone like Liam Neeson, Matt Damon, or perhaps Scooby Doo foiling the plot. But just in case this isn’t some pie in the sky attempt to generate venture capital before going the way of Elvis, then Joule may be a company to watch.
Image source: [JouleUnlimited.com]