"... if I grow an acre of corn, I can grow 18 gallons of oil per acre per year, algae can go up to 20,000 gallons of oil per acre per year"

Algae fuel, also called algal fuel, oilgae, algaeoleum or third generation biofuel, is a biofuel from algae. Compared with second generation biofuels, algae are high-yield high-cost (30 times more energy per acre than terrestrial crops) feedstocks to produce biofuels. Since the whole organism uses sunlight to produce lipids, or oil, algae can produce more oil in an area the size of a two-car garage than an entire football field of soybeans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyoKTbxerpQ



picture taken from www.planktos-science.com

With oil price increasing, people are looking forward for alternative sources of energy. Biofuel from other plants such as corn can give rise to food crisis and takes more space to produce to meet demands of consumers. Algae unlike the rest is a different matter. There can be much interest in using algae for making vegetable oil, biodisel, bioethanol and other forms of biofuels.

According to an article in en.wikipedia.org "The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles (40,000 square kilometers), which is a few thousand square miles larger than Maryland, Belgium. This is less than 1/7th the area of corn harvested in the United States in 2000"

In addition algae takes carbon dioxide currently available in the atmosphere; and releases oxygen. So if they were burnt the carbon dioxide going back to the atmosphere is what it would have consumed to make "it's" oil and maintain environmental balances. Perhaps we may be looking at a permanent solution to one of the world's major problems ? Time can tell.