Algae bio-diesel has been gaining increasing attention in the past several years.  Algae has relatively high oil content, after processing the remnants can be used for other things (even burning for electricity, with the ash as fertilizer), and the path to producing algae ‘seems’ so straightforward: water, sunlight, and nutrients. And, one of algae’s great potential benefits is filtering emissions from fossil-fuel plants to, in essence, get double service (or more) from the carbon emissions.
Oil from Algae, on Worldchanging, is one of the best overviews of algae fuel developments, the basic concepts, and links to ongoing activities.Â
Algae’s potential benefits are huge:
* Cleaning up dirtied water (such as from breweries or even sewage), with the ‘pollution’ a source of nutrients
* Recycling the emissions from burning algae waste back into the system, recapturing some of the carbon multiple times — thus reducing CO2 emissions even further
The challenge for Algae was price — fuel prices might make it a profitable venture now. But, the introduction of a Carbon Tax would quickly catapult Algae bio-diesels systems into a much desired status for large emitters (like coal-electricity plants).