bionic diesel

did you all know that there is apparently a fuel out there that can, according to michael briggs of the university of new hampshire physics department, "be used in existing diesel engines with no changes, and is made from vegetable oils rather than petroleum"?? i had heard biodiesel mentioned before as a possible means of reducing our dependency on oil and the various costs associated with it, but it seemed to always get lost in all the hype surrounding the hydrogen fuel cell (which may yet save us all, who knows...) as briggs shows in his article, "Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae," (click on his name to read it if you haven't already, you lazy bastard) it is presently possible to "begin producing biodiesel on the scale necessary to replace all petroleum transportation fuels in the U.S." in fact, with all his fancy "numbers" and "estimates," not to mention his use of footnotes, he makes it sound downright feasible:

The Office of Fuels Development, a division of the Department of Energy, funded a program from 1978 through 1996 under the National Renewable Energy Laboratory known as the "Aquatic Species Program". The focus of this program was to investigate high oil yield algaes that could be grown specifically for the purpose of wide scale biodiesel production. Some species of algae are ideally suited to biodiesel production due to their high oil content (some as much as 50% oil), and extremely fast growth rates. From the results of the Aquatic Species Program, algae farms would let us supply enough biodiesel to completely replace petroleum as a transportation fuel in the US (as well as its other main use - home heating oil).

but what about the cost, you say? he's way ahead of you:

The operating costs (including power consumption, labor, chemicals, and fixed capital costs (taxes, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and return on investment) worked out to $12,000 per hectare. That would equate to $33.8 billion per year for all the algae farms, to yield all the oil feedstock necessary for the entire country. Compare that to the more than $100 billion the US spends each year just on purchasing crude oil from foreign countries.

so, this looks like a win/win for everyone, right? save money, stop supporting the oil industry, reduce, reuse, recycle, the whole bit. in my naivete, i am certainly missing something. why are our political leaders not pushing harder for such a magical methadone to the heroin of our modern economy? what have we got to lose?

special thanks to my man tony on okinoerabu for the heads up. (^_^) go lakers