Q. What is the Opportunity for Algae?

A. Increasing demand for food, fuel and carbon mitigation has created an environment of competing interests that threatens to limit the progress of these three drivers of sustainability. The need to de-link these currently interconnected markets so that the success of one does not come at the expense of another, invites a solution that simultaneously produces food and renewable fuel while reducing the carbon footprint.

Algae have been identified as a unique product that can become the lynchpin of a long term sustainability model because of its high oil content, nutritional value and CO2 consumption. However, certain challenges have prevented algae from becoming a large scale commercial reality. Challenges have included insufficient production volumes, inconsistent product quality and high upfront capital cost.

Q. What is XL's Strategy?

A. Unlike many companies that are proposing commercialization of algae production in 3-5 years, XL is ready to move to commercialization today.

Commercial production begins with the Withrow 40 development and will then expand to the Vicksburg 400.

Q. What is the XL's Focus?

A. XL is focused on the development of the lowest cost algae production system. Many researchers consider the open pond system to be the least cost approach. Others promote the closed bio-reactor system for greater control and yield optimization. The issue is the captial cost per ton of algae biomass produced. The open pond has a low capital cost and a low production potential. The closed bio-reactor system has a high yeild potential with an extremely high capital cost.

XL has challenged this paradigm, and in doing so, has developed a system that offers the management controls similar to a bio-reactor but with a lower capital cost than an open pond system.

Q. What makes XL Renewables different from others pursuing algae?

A. XL Renewables has developed a highly productive, cost-effective, easy-to-implement and agriculturally-based solution to algae production called the XL Super Trough System. The XL Super Trough System is a platform technology developed by experienced agriculturalists, biologists and engineers utilizing time-proven cultivation methods and commonly available off-the-shelf materials and components to create the only algae production and harvesting system that meets mass-market needs. Specifically, Super Trough enables customers to source large production volumes at low cost with low risk.