Filling Your Tank with Pond Scum

A problem facing advocates of renewable fuels produced by agriculture face a problem -- how to grow enough of the plants to get the amount of energy we'd need? Some create visions of people going hungry while we grow crops to power SUVs. Never mind that that's not a real concern -- most of the world's hungry live in nations with food surpluses. And where do you think those gladiolas in your flower bed or the spirea in front of your house came from? We grow plenty of non-food crops now and it's not a problem.

Putting the final nail in the coffin of the robbing-the-hungry-to-fill-the-tank argument is Jim Sears, a Colorado-based entrepreneur. Using crops like canola or soy can only produce 3.7 billion liters of biodeisel fuel a year -- the US uses 227 billion gallons of deisel now. Clearly, it's not enough.

Voice of America:

Fortunately, Sears says, an unconventional crop could produce 100 times more biodiesel per hectare than either canola or soy. It can thrive in places where other crops can't grow at all, and it only requires the equivalent of 5 centimeters of rain a year. It's algae, a small but familiar plant, usually seen as a green scum that forms on ponds or aquarium glass.

Not only would algae farms produce energy, but they would also serve to offset the loss of wetlands elsewhere.

Works for me.

Tags: news | politics | energy | global warming | agriculture | environment