UK announces world's largest algal biofuel project "Summary"

The Carbon Trust hopes to make algal biofuel a commercial reality by 2020. Transportation accounts for one quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions. Recently, a review showed that algae are a potential way to generate sustainable energy. Algae produce a range of chemicals and scientists hope to find strains that could produce oil.

For the first stage of the project, the Carbon Trust will spend up to £6m in a range of British companies involved in promising algae research. The second step of the project will start in around a year and involves scaling up the algae-growing operation. In the past there were many efforts to develop biofuels from algae, but none of them was a success. But now, the Carbon Trust believe that the interest in algae has been renewed because of the recent increases in oil prices.

There are many companies around the world already involved in making fuel from algae. The most important benefit of algae is its ability to remove CO2 from the air.