January 12, 2012
...AND CHEAPER...:
Craig Venter Explains How Pond Scum Will Save the World: The man who first sequenced the human genome and designed the first synthetic cell explains why simple algae--and some genetic engineering--may hold the key to our future (David Biello, January 11, 2012, Scientific American)
Why algae?You look at the potential output from algae, and it's one to two orders of magnitude better than the best agricultural system. If we were trying to make liquid transportation fuels to replace all transportation fuels in the U.S., and you try and do that from corn, it would take a facility three times the size of the continental U.S. If you try to do it from algae, it's a facility roughly the size of the state of Maryland. One is doable, and the other's just absurd.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 12, 2012 6:49 AM
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