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Big oil firms touted algae as climate solution. Now all have pulled funding
- anovikov 4y agoMany things have been tried. 15 years ago when algae craze started, it was unimaginable to see the electric car revolution we are experiencing today, it was common sense to think that whatever solution to climate/peak oil (which was all the rage before the shale revolution), it has to be a drop-in replacement for the oil-based infrastructure. There was one more failed attempt, now almost forgotten: cellulosic ethanol. Stuff that also technically sort of worked, but never at scale, and never became profitable. Now we have electric cars and nothing blocks us from replacing all of gasoline and diesel with clean electricity, none of these are necessary anymore, but back then, it was impossible to tell. It's good that many ways of fixing the problem have been tried, to be able to choose the best one.