Algae next great renewable energy source - Business Insider
▻http://www.businessinsider.com/algae-next-great-renewable-energy-source-2015-8
One of the newest, and seemingly most viable forms of clean energy, could be poised to outperform all of the existing options, including solar: algae biofuel.
Algae are found throughout the Earth’s oceans, where they employ photosynthetic processes to create energy using sunlight. Some types of algae produce oils that they use to store energy, which means that certain algae can be grown and then harvested to produce biofuel: a net carbon-neutral process.
Although other crops, such as corn and soybeans, have been used to produce biofuel in the past, algae offer several advantages over them. According to the US Department of Energy, algae yields are between 10 and 100 times as high as those of traditional biofuels. What’s more, algae can grow in marginal or brackish agricultural areas, meaning that production can be ramped up significantly without competing with food crops for land and other resources.
The global market for biofuel was estimated at about $100 billion in 2013. Many believe that the size of this market could almost double within the next few decades. According to scientist and entrepreneur Craig Venter, it would take a land area three times the size of the United States to replace all the fuel used in transportation in the U.S. with corn-derived biofuel. By contrast, it would only take an area the size of Maryland to do so using algae.
The U.S. Department of Energy is pouring money into efforts to promote the viability and efficiency of using algae as a fuel. It has announced $18 million in funding towards this end, and Just Energy in Ohio has pushed for more state level funding for research into methods to more efficiently grow, process and extract the oils from algae. Efforts are underway throughout many other countries as well.
