The San Francisco Chronicle has a story today about a startup that has produced a small amount of jet fuel from algae and feedstock.
Feedstock, such as switchgrass, is fed to genetically modified algae and the algae produce oil, once they’ve consumed more feed than they need, according to the article.
There’s no mention, however, of how algal oil compares to petroleum as far as creating pollution when burned.
The article states that the supply of oil from algae may be limited only by available feedstock supplies. Bigger issues would be how diverting feesdtock to fuel would change food production and availability, and the efficiency of the fuel output versus how much feedstock would be needed to produce the oil and how much energy and water would be used to grow the feedstock in the first place.
I tend to believe that we need to find ways to stop using oil, as opposed to finding ways to create more oil, but I think new ideas are certainly worth examining.
