A NASA-backed experiment harvests algae for oil, releases fresh water.
By Jonathan Trent | Posted Monday, Sept. 3, 2012, at 7:15 AM ET
Before we run out of fossil oil, we will thoroughly tap the sea
floor, find and frack wells wherever they may be, and excavate and
extract the most recalcitrant of oil shales. In so doing, we will fuel
our lifestyle for a few more decades at the cost of releasing vast
amounts of carbon dioxide, adding to global warming, melting ice caps,
raising sea levels, acidifying oceans—and setting course for a future
for which there are few optimistic scenarios.
In the face of all this, scientists are racing to find alternatives.
Biofuels are my passion, but they have had rather a bad press, from
complaints about displacing food production to the inefficiency of
soybeans and the carbon footprint of ethanol. Microalgae have a low
profile but they deserve a much higher one, since the fossil oil we mine
mostly comes from microalgae that lived in shallow seas millions of
years ago—and they may be key to developing sustainable alternative
fuels.
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