Researchers at the University of Minnesota fed algae meal (what's left over after algae is used to make biofuels) to dairy cows and discovered that this by-product of algae biofuel production worked as well or better than the high-protein alfalfa normally fed dairy cattle.
Do you know what this means? We can grow algae for fuel on land unsuitable for crops, feed it CO2 exhaust that would normally be sent into the atmosphere (extra CO2 makes algae grow very fast), and with the leftovers, we can replace some or all of the feed now being grown on croplands (alfalfa) to produce food.
Algae can be made into ethanol, methanol, biodiesel, and green crude.
Innovations like these come across my desk every day. And all this innovation at the moment is occurring in an economic environment without a big market. If you'd like to see an explosion of this kind of innovation, help us pass an open fuel standard. It will provide an enormous economic incentive to find ways to successfully compete with petroleum for the fuel market. Who knows what kind of breakthroughs are possible?
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