[P-40]

There is a lot of interesting commercial development going on in this field. It's just getting the bugs worked out to make it commercially feasible to produce the stuff in volume that is the largest problem I have seen this far.

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9727005-7.html

Algae start-up signs contract for biodiesel

Algae, say advocates, is one greasy organism. The single-celled plants produce quite a bit of oil for their size. The North Sea oil fields, some assert, were not created from the bones of dead dinosaurs or palm trees. Instead, it is the prehistoric remnant of a massive algal bloom.

[Reeses]

Saltwater algae oil is much more promising than ethanol from corn and sugar cane that require consumption of limited farmland, fertilizers, pesticides, and freshwater resources but I haven’t heard of anyone trying to use the open ocean to grow algae yet, they always try high capital cost/high efficiency methods. With the free open ocean high efficiency isn’t an issue since even 1% efficiency would capture huge amounts of energy. It would be hard to harvest but there’s probably a high oil fish that could do that for us.