Green algae is one, and maybe the only one, of the alternative energy possibilities that seems to make sense for really large scale production. When this was discussed months ago, someone posted links to companies that had pilot projects going, and it looked promising, renewable and a truly new source of energy that wouldn’t compete for food crops to use as raw material.
Agreed. There are a number of chlorophytes that contain large oil-filled vacuoles. In other words, this has promise.
The hundreds of thousands of jobs is likely wrong, as this is a mix between aquaculture and an automated laboratory process in real life.
There is no way all of teh pilot plants started will end up being the winning technologies, there is a continueing winnowing of technologies, and management skills too.
That said, many of those pilot plants are now being expanded into demonstration plants and full sized production plants.
Other bio feedstocks that will succeed are; garbage, in fact landfills will be outlawed, sewage, animal manures, much of the nutrient rich runoff from agricultural fields will grow green algae instead of feeding the ocean dead zones. Storm and demolition debris, office and factory wastes, waste plastics, leaves and lawn clippings and road kill will all be processed into various chemicals and fuels.
Water is another co product that will be separated from bio feedstocks, purified and sold.