Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by andrewflnr 299 days ago
Ok, yeah, if your reference for biofuel is corn, where you can only use a tiny fraction of the plant, no kidding it'll look bad.
1 comments

Which plant do you estimate is a much better pick?
Either a perennial with oily fruit (someone mentioned palm oil down below), or something where you can relatively easily use the entire plant. The idea I keep coming back to is algae bred or engineered for oil content, but I'm not actually sure how feasible that is.
> Mayali says that growing phytoplankton outdoors with natural light and finding a less energy-intensive method of powering production would help microalgae-based diesel compete.

I'm sorry, were they measuring the carbon footprint of growing algae by what it takes to grow it inside with artificial light?