Reply #16: Don't know but UC Berkeley has a new contract w/BP

[EVDebs]

UC Academics Excluded From BP Contract Vote
By Richard Brenneman (02-16-07)
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?archiveDate=02-16-07&storyID=26341

"UC Berkeley’s Academic Senate probably won’t have a vote about the planned half-billion-dollar alternative fuel program now being negotiated with BP—the company formerly known as British Petroleum."

And in the past the Lawrence Livermore Lab's Zinc Air Fuel Cell program was similarly shut down. The LLL ZAFC project

Zinc-air technology moves toward commercialization
http://www.llnl.gov/str/News1297.html

obviously never got 'commercialized'. Zinc oxide pellets with a potassium hydroxide catalyst, opposed to the hydrogen fuel cell PEM, with platinum catalyst and high costs, lost out the the hydrogen PEM projects.

If the ZAFC and Algae projects are shunted aside look for BP sucking up to be part of the rationale.