Algae biofuel outfit GreenFuel Technologies has laid off nineteen folks, or about half its staff, another sign of the difficulty that fledgling alternative fuels face. A company representative confirmed the staff reduction on Mon. and recounted one of GreenFuel’s 2 major customers–the Aurantia cement factory in Spain–remains a consumer.

GreenFuel has developed a technique for growing and cropping algae in a greenhouse. The concept is to find the greenhouses by a massive carbon-dioxide emitter, like a cement factory or power plant, to “feed” the algae.

The algae is then cropped, dried, and turned into biodiesel or feed food. Company Boss Simon Upfill-Brown, who was hired last year from DJX Chemical to head the 8-year-old firm, told Xconomy the engineering for its Spanish deal, formerly conjectured at $92 million, will be outsourced. “We’ve got to weather this industrial typhoon as best we can,” Upfill-Brown announced. Somebody making claims to be a previous contract employee at the company declared GreenFuel’s Aurantia consumer was discontented due to many months of delays.

GreenFuel was one of the 1st firms to get subsidized to commercially exploit algae farming, and there are now many corporations and analysts studying techniques for turning algae into fuel. Its first test facility at an Arizona use produced too much algae, making the cropping awfully manual and driving up the price of operation. It replaced its Head honcho , putting financier Bob Metcalfe in charge for many months. Several clean-tech firms are hunkering down, wanting to preserve money so they can finish developing products. Biofuel firms wanting to commercially exploit their technology are especially exposed to the finance industry collapse. Demonstration plants need big amounts of money to build. But speculators became more anti-risk, making it tougher for comparatively unproven firms to show and tune their technologies.