[Wonder Warthog]

"One example is growing algae in ponds to turn into biomass to make ethanol. Can you imagine the massive energy expenditures just to dry out that goop."

Yes, but avoiding all that is exactly what the Joule technology is about. Their process goes straight to diesel with minimal biomass growth.

[dennisw]

Yes. Joule seems to avoid having to dry out algae. Good luck to them. But if it works any kind of scaling up will cost trillions. Joule said it would need land the size of Texas panhandle to make enough to cover all US energy consumption.

So far Joule does sound credible