The world is a growing and thriving place where more people live than ever before and these people are living longer and healthier lives thanks to modern medicine. Industry, businesses and farms are expanding at an exponential rate and need more vehicles and more ways to transport goods to consumers. But as there are more people living longer and our need for fuel grows every day, this is causing a great strain on our need for energy, fuel and ability to produce and grow food. With this new found growth, a product is needed to fuel the growth. While coal and oil are the majority in supporting our expansion, we have found new ways to power our vehicles and heat our homes with biofuel that is much cleaner and not as limited in supply as fossil fuel alternatives. The most common of these biofuels we use comes from corn and other crops typically used for our food supply. But that's the problem, it takes away from our food supply what we could use elsewhere, for example for trade or simply to feed ourselves. The alternative to food-based biofuels are algae-based biofuels. First explored as an alternative fuel in 1978, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Aquatic Species Program studied the high oil production of algae. Researchers tested more than 3,000 different types of algae and found that, if produced in large quantities, they could replace fossil fuels for heating homes and transport. To understand more about why researchers chose algae as an alternative fuel source, let's find out more. Algae is a plant-like organism that has more than 100,000 different species in the family, each coming from a different... middle of paper... ....no data has been released on car fuel consumption or on the type of emissions produced by the car due to the fuel. Another problem with biofuel is a method of algae growth. Cultivation in open ponds is risky as the algae can be easily contaminated and the pond in which they grow must be pumped with carbon dioxide which, if not monitored properly, could wildly disperse the ecosystem killing many of the inhabitants. As well as how much maintenance and care needs to be done so that the algae can grow at the best rate. But biofuel labs have found a way around this problem by using closed bioreactor systems to not risk causing any harm to the environment and to have much greater control over the algae themselves. But until more major fuel companies decide to research and develop this product, we'll simply have to settle for reading about any new developments that occur..