Producing globally significant amounts of biofuel (either from algae, as Venter attempts, or from other plants) is a terribly difficult endeavor. The world's ye

Producing globally significant amounts of biofuel (either from algae, as Venter attempts, or from other plants) is a terribly difficult endeavor. The world's yearly fossil fuel consumption is about 12 TW of energy; at the same time, the entire biosphere currently fixes about 55-60 TW / year into plant matter [1]. Thus, the biofuel-producing plants would have to amount to about 20% of the Earth's biosphere in order to completely replace our consumption of fossil fuels (assuming this consumption doesn't increase). This is a gigantic task, which would require extreme global effort (if it is at all feasible). [1] "Global catastrophes and trends" V. Smil, MIT 2008, p. 83