Imagine using algae to fuel and feed our world.
Research is underway and vast ponds are under construction to test what has been described as 'the world's best hope for a replacement for fossil fuel'.
Those are the words of Professor Susan Pond, a former managing director of pharmaceutical company Johnson and Johnson.
There are 40,000 species of micro-algae and they are the world's fastest-growing plants.
"They're everywhere. They account for half the biomass, they take up millions of tonnes of CO2, they can clean up polluted water, and they love to make oil that can be made into fuel," says Professor Pond.
Professor Pond is now researching biofuels at the United States Study Centre at the University of Sydney, but it is her past experience in cutting-edge research in human health that leads her to believe that a solution to the looming oil crisis can be found.
"I'm a physician. I've looked after patients with many diseases, made inventions of my own, including treating people with HIV.
"During my time I've marvelled at the success at sequencing the human genome, we've discovered the DNA double helix, and we do have the ingenuity to solve some of these problems."
In Queensland, MBD Energy Ltd and James Cook University have a joint research and development facility at Townsville that is using carbon dioxide captured from coal fired power station smoke stacks to feed algae, which in turn produce both biodiesel and feedstock.
MBD Energy has agreements with three of Australia's largest coal-fired power generators to build test facilities in Queensland, Victoria and at Eraring Energy in News South Wales.
The company says each of the three Bio CCS algal synthesiser projects has the potential to grow to 80-hectare commercial plants.
Each is capable of producing 11 million litres of oil for plastics and transport fuel, and 25,000 tonnes of drought proof animal feed and expanding to eventually consume more than half of each power station's problem flue-gas emissions.
Late last year Murdoch University and the University of Adelaide formed a partnership with SQC Pty Ltd, to set up an open pond pilot plant in Karratha in WA.
That was followed by a US company, Aurora Algae Inc, doing the same thing.
According to Aurora, the combination of a "perfect climate and the right blend of resources, including abundant seawater, industrial CO2 and skilled labor, made north-western Australia an ideal location" for their facility.
abc
