The Future of Biofuel Smells Fishy

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the future of biofuel may not be in corn stalks, sugar cane or algae. It's in fish.

The aptly titled LiveFuels Inc., is looking at the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, a place where fertilizer run off from the farms up north has created a forest of algae that is so voracious that it has eaten the life out of 3,000 square miles of prime shrimping and fishing territory. On the plus side, the algae is a great potential biofuel and harvesting it can not only save the Gulf, but also provide green fuel at the pump. The trouble is the costly process of harvesting the algae and extracting its oil.

So, asks LiveFuels, why go through an expensive extraction process that Mother Nature does naturally? Instead of harvesting the algae, LiveFuels is going one rung up the food chain and harvesting the fish that feed on the algae. The fish process the algae into oil (this is where your omega-3 fatty acid dietary supplements come from), and then LiveFuels literally squishes the oil out of the fish and into your car.

There's no word on what the fuel would smell like, but the future of the biofuel industry smells fishy. The idea sounds part mad scientist, part genius, so it's hard to tell if this is just another red herring in the pursuit of clean energy, or if LiveFuels has angled a truly groundbreaking idea.