President George Bush – a member of a political party that ostentatiously champions the free market and condemns government interference – has been working to increase federal corn subsidies to help make corn farmers “ethanol sheiks”.
As President Bush ignored the experts on the consequences on getting involved in Iraq, President Bush is still ignoring people who know more than he does by tuning out warnings of the potential environmental and food supply problems of using corn as a fuel source.
However, there is something cool going on, from an unexpected organization. Shell Oil.
Shell Oil is working to make diesel fuel out of algae. Algae can feed off of the carbon dioxide saved from smoke stacks. Algae requires no farm land and can produce up to 15 times more fuel than other biofuel crops per given land area.
From
http://tinyurl.com/35xwlx
Shell is to become the first major oil company to produce diesel fuel from marine algae.
Algae are a climate-friendly way to make fuel from carbon dioxide. They produce an oil that can readily be converted to diesel, and can be fed CO2 directly from smokestacks. Unlike biofuels such as corn, they don’t use up soil or water that could otherwise be used to grow food, which can pump up food prices.
The US government abandoned research on algal biofuel in the 1990s because of the low cost of crude oil. But as oil and food prices began to rise, small algal fuel producers sprang up.
Shell plans to begin construction on a pilot plant in Hawaii immediately, which it expects will produce 15 times as much oil for a given area as other biofuel crops, thanks to the efficiency of algal photosynthesis.
Energy and Fuels – Learn more about the looming energy crisis in our comprehensive special report.
From issue 2635 of New Scientist magazine, 20 December 2007, page 29