No longer lowly pond scum, algae have rocketed in status to what some say is the most promising 'green' fuel source of the future. With the likes of Bill Gates, the US military and ExxonMobil trumpeting their potential, "it's hard to find someone on the sidewalk in New York who hasn't heard about the idea of using algae for energy," says Harrison Dillon, president and chief technology officer of Solazyme, a biotechnology company in South San Francisco, California. The company this month signed an $8.5-million deal to produce commercial quantities of algal fuel for the US Navy.
展开▼
