Center for Advanced BioEnergy Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Algae Could Supply All U.S. Energy Needs

Every drop of oil on earth comes from millions of years of buildup from algae and other natural residue... buried, compressed, and eventually drilled--supplying our energy since the late 1800s.

Now, consider that we're going to deplete, in less than 300 years, what took hundreds of millions of years to form. And with the inevitable global depletion of oil, alternative forms of energy are destined to emerge.

Algae, ironically, is one of them...

Research at leading universities suggests that algae could supply enough fuel to meet all of America's transportation needs in the form of biodiesel... using a scant 0.2% of the nation's land.

In fact, enough algae can be grown to replace all transportation fuels in the U.S. on only 15,000 square miles, or 4.5 million acres of land.

That's about the size of Maryland.

How is this all possible?

Technology exists right now to cultivate algae that can be used as fuel, using human and animal waste as fertilizer.

Green Chip Review, Oct. 17, 2007

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