How much can the commercialization of algae biodiesel combat our liquid fuels problem with respect to oil dependence?
Since algae is highly scalable it can do much to combat the liquid fuels problem. Rather than get into specific numbers, let’s cover the ways in which algae can do this. First of all, there only a few concentrated areas remaining from which we can get large amounts of oil. Producing algal oil close to the end-use site, rather than piping or shipping oil thousands of miles, will soon prove more practical. And unlike oil, algae is a renewable resource, capable of providing consistent amounts of oil as our fossil reserves grow harder and more costly to find and exploit. Algae can also be more distributed because it’s easier to build refineries for the oil. There are only a handful of traditional oil refineries, which already causes major bottlenecks. But building new ones has proven difficult thanks to NIMBYism and growing environmental concerns. In the same vein as scalability, algae’s ability to be granular (produced and refined near end-use) will do much to help combat fossil oil use.
