Good day everyone, I am Ramjan Sayari, today we will talk all about climate change.

I hope that
today inspires ideas and discussions around the way that we can make our city a better place!
For the past 150 years, we’ve been using fossil fuels to generate our electricity all around the
world. For this period of time, we significantly witnessed and experienced the bad effects of
producing and burning of fossil fuels not only to the environment, but also to us and other living
organisms. When fossil fuels are burned, they release large amounts of carbon dioxide, a
greenhouse gas, into the air. Greenhouse gases trap heat in our atmosphere, causing global
warming. Experts have detected that the average global temperature has increased by 1C. If the
global temperature continues to increase by 1.5°C, it will be hard for us to lower the global
temperature and will cause risks further sea level rise, extreme weather, biodiversity loss and
species extinction, as well as food scarcity, worsening health and poverty for millions of people
worldwide. How can we prevent this? The answer is algal biofuels. Biofuels are renewable. In other
words, we can grow biomass feedstock again and again to continuously produce biofuels.

We must face the fact that the fossil fuels supply is limited and continues to deplete day-by day.
It is predicted that we will run out of fossil fuels in this century. Oil can last up to 50 years, natural
gas up to 53 years, and coal up to 114 years.

Today I will discuss the potential that algal biofuel has to become the province’s main supply of
energy and the latest research that can make algal biofuel more efficient and cost effective. I will
also present the environmental benefits that come with using algal biofuel over other and more
harmful forms of energy.

Microalgaes are photosynthetic organisms that grows in aquatic habitats like oceans and
freshwater, and grows fast in tropical climates like in the Philippines. Microalgae have recently
attracted considerable interest worldwide, due to their extensive application potential in the
renewable energy and biopharmaceutical. Microalgae are renewable, sustainable, and economical
sources of biofuels, bioactive medicinal products, and food ingredients. Several microalgae species
have been investigated for their potential as value-added products with remarkable
pharmacological and biological qualities. As biofuels, they are a perfect substitute to liquid fossil
fuels with respect to cost, renewability, and environmental concerns. Microalgae have a significant
ability to convert atmospheric CO2 to useful products such as carbohydrates, lipids, and other
bioactive metabolites.

One of the most promising uses of algae is as renewable raw material for biofuels. The vegetable
oil from algae can be used directly or refined into various biofuels, including renewable diesel and
jet fuel, in addition to other chemical ingredients for products such as cosmetics. The
carbohydrates (sugars) from algae can be fermented to make additional biofuels, including ethanol
and butanol, as well as other products such as plastics and biochemicals. Biomass from algae can
be used for pyrolysis oil or combined heat and power generation.
The main advantage of biofuel is carbon-neutrality, the much-desired balance between carbon
emissions and carbon removal. More advantages are:
1. The shift from fossil to algae-based fuel could be rapid
2. Algae is a crop that we can cultivate with great ease and almost anywhere, outdoor and
indoor,
3. In addition to being the most carbon-neutral of all bio-combustibles, algae offer higher
energy capacity than any of the potential fuel ingredients above. It’s the most efficient in
terms of crop yield as one acre of an algal farm is able to produce approximately 80 times
more oil than, for example, corn or sugarcane.
4. Just as it is in the case of crude oil refining, production of algae-based fuel would allow for
making numerous byproducts, for example, fertilizers, soap and other cleaning products,
as well as for feeding animals.
5. Algae grows fast. They can double their size within just one day, allowing us to meet even
a rapidly developing demand.

As per the advantage, there are also disadvantages when it comes to algal biofuel,
1. Algae cultivation requires large areas of water.
2. The production of algal fuel would be expensive at first. Investments into the technology
would have to be significant, with the returns being unknown. That could likely discourage
many investors from putting their money into this new business. It would also take many
years of technology development to reduce the price of harvesting and processing.
3. There is a danger of creating large-area monocultures, where algae would be the only crop
for years. Monocultures often lead to over-cultivation of certain strains of plants which
reduces their resistance to diseases.
4. Other biofuels are less expensive.
5. Algae can grow in most parts of the world, however, to be profitable, only certain regions,
with adequate weather conditions, can be considered. In some places, algae would have
to be cultivated indoors, further increasing costs and the price of the product.

Therefore, I conclude that the application of cultivating and extracting of biofuels from microalgae
are appropriate in our province, Palawan. Due to our ideal climate, hot temperature, being an
archipelago, and abundance of aquatic habitats in our province. No sustainable technology is
without its challenges but blind promotion of those technologies without honest consideration of
the long-term implications may lead to the acceptance of strategies whose long-term
consequences outweigh their short-term benefits. We have presented what we view as the most
important current and upcoming challenges of algae biofuels but, as with any new industry, the
more we learn the more we realize that challenges exist that we had not foreseen. Even given
these uncertainties, I believe that fuel production from algae can be cost competitive and widely
scalable and deployable in the next 7–10 years, but only if we continue to expand our
understanding of these amazing organisms as we expand our ability to engineer them for the
specific task of developing a new energy industry