Next Green Thing: Finding Fuel In Our Ponds

The Department of Energy announced last week that it’s spending $4.4 million to fund six new biofuel projects at various universities, and two of those six projects focus on algae.

Researchers have been experimenting with ways to extract oil from the simple, water-based plants for decades. They already know how to do it - now it’s a matter of extracting it in a way that’s affordable and realistic for everyday use. They hope that algae-based biofuels could eventually replace corn-based ethanol, which has undercut the world food supply and driven-up the price of corn.

Michael Kanellos is on the line to walk us through some of the latest algae research. He’s senior policy analyst at Greentech Media, and he joins us from time to time for our ongoing environmental series, “the next green thing.”

Watch a video created by Michael Kanellos on algae biofuels:

(Photo of algae by Future-PhD)