Baby, You Can Drive My Algae-Powered Car

Announced today in the U.K. is the world's largest publicly-funded project to produce transport fuels from algae. The U.K.'s Carbon Trust today announced a project to make algae biofuels a commercial reality by 2020. The hope is that up to £26M will be spent on developing the technology and infrastructure so that a large percentage of fuel used will be algae biofuels (and not fossil fuels).

Mark Williamson, Innovations Director at the Carbon Trust, said, "We must find a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to oil for our cars and planes if we are to deliver the deep cuts in carbon emissions necessary to tackle climate change. Algae could provide a significant part of the answer and represents a multibillion-pound opportunity."

With transportation accounting for 25 percent of carbon emissions in the U.K., scientists will conduct research to find the best oil-producing algae to be used to make alternative fuels. Once found, these fuels could then be produced and grown in large amounts to ensure a better source of fuel and help to reduce the U.K.'s carbon emissions in line with the recent announcement by Ed Miliband, the new energy and climate change secretary.

The Carbon Trust forecasts that algae-based biofuels could replace more than 70 billion litres of fossil fuels used every year around the world in road transport and aviation by 2030, equivalent to 12 percent of annual global jet fuel consumption, or 6 percent of road transport diesel. In carbon terms, this equates to an annual saving of more than 160m tonnes of CO2 globally with a market value of more than £15bn.

As already brought to your attention by Dan, this will not only greatly help the environment but also help create many new jobs around the world too. Lets hope the scientists get to grips with algae and help make this a reality. Beep beep'm beep beep, yeah.