The Globe and Mail

Could the next green fuel be pea-green pond scum?

Supporters think algae could some day be turned into cheap fuel for automobiles and airplanes, and they are betting heavily with infusions of venture capital money and intensive research.

On a large tract of land in Thailand’s dusty northeast, Suwit Yotongyot hopes to make a fortune on jatropha, a plant with a poisonous nut that might hold the key to the nation’s energy troubles.

The octogenarian leader wrote that during a meeting earlier this week between the US president and American car manufacturers, “the sinister idea of converting food into combustibles was definitively established as the economic line of the foreign policy of the United States”.

Planet Ark

European Union lawmakers have proposed cutting the share of traditional biofuels to less than 6 percent of EU road transport fuel by 2020, a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday showed.

Toronto Star

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is defending the government’s $1.5 billion biofuels development plan. He believes that rising energy costs plays a larger role in driving up food prices compare to biofuels production.

The New York Times

European officials proposed scaling back drastically on their goal of increasing Europe’s use of biofuels, a major about-face on a central environmental and energy issue.

Toronto Star

The Ontario government is pouring another $7.5 million into research for biofuels that can be made from agricultural waste such as corn husks and manure instead of food crops.

George Monbiot argues that “we need a five-year freeze on biofuels” in order to save the planet and to prevent a food battle between people and cars, while others think differently.

As concerns over food shortages increase, UN’s Secretary General warns the United States and Europe to cut back on their production of biofuels. Leaders have previously pledged to increase production as a means to fight climate change.

New company responds to a global oil crisis and ethanol’s demands on food stocks by looking to the benefits offered by algae for limiting our CO2 emissions. Examines the potentially huge benefits for harvesting algae to be used as a biofuel.