Biofuels

The unofficial end of summer is just a few weeks away with the coming of Labor Day, but those of us with swimming pools might squeeze a few more weeks of fun if the temperature stays north of ninety degrees. But when skimming pool or testing the ph balance, we might want to think about letting a little algae grow in the water -- someday the green stuff might be worth something.

But that someday remains a ways off. At least that's the thinking of scientists down at the University of Virginia who are looking at how reasonable it may be to make algae a source of biofuel energy, just as we use corn for fuel. According to a recent article from Discovery News, Lisa Colosi, an environmental and civil engineer at UVA, there are a lot of problems with algae as a biofuel, the most pressing of which is something called energy density.

Whether we're talking about ethanol or the green stuff growing at the bottom of your pool, a lot of that stuff takes up a lot of space. And the amount of energy available per gram from the biofuel just doesn't stack up alongside the juice we get from our dirtier sources -- coal and oil.

But should we just throw up our hands and say "Drill, baby drill" or "dig, baby, dig"?

No.

Investment in technology needs to continue both from the private sector and the government sector. If folks believe that the government has had no historical role in the development of our fossil fuel based industries, check out the stats from Grist.