Because of total focus on petty politics, the science of energy and it's long term consequences to the US have been lost to both political parties - whose staggering ignorance on the subject is amazing as it it is repulsive. In the best case more drilling and conversion to nat gas will buy us a few decades. Biofuels on the other hand will actually shorten the time we have to develop truly renewable energy.
Over two billion dollars has been spent on algae biofuel research - mostly in the last five years with exceptionally limited results - so why? Exxon alone claimed to be investing 600 million in 2010 and several other big oils are heavily invested - why?
Big oil is logically interested in algae and other biofuels because they would be the primary recipients of biofuels business. All significant scale biofuel production is dependent on NPK fertilizers. The N - nitrogen in NPK comes from natural gas. P - phosphorous from rock phosphates (another peak commodity - like oil) whose mining consumes huge amounts of petroleum fuels - diesel and natural gas as does K potassium. Some experts have calculated that a global biofuels would quadruple the NPK demand:
(
http://seekingalpha.com/article/182522-taking-stock-of-phosphorus-and-biofuels)
and consequently have dramatic impacts on the 85-95% of human food production that is currently completely dependent on NPK. Did I mention that 85% of the essential P (rock phosphate in NPK are located in Morocco and the Western Sahara.
(
http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.foreignpolicy.com%2Farticles%2F2010%2F04%2F20%2Fpeak_phosphorus%3Fhidecomments%3Dyes&urlhash=0B1M&_t=tracking_disc)
That's biofuels energy independence strategy - we swap our oil dependence on Saudi Arabia and the ME for a new phosphate dependence on Morocco and N. Africa. Brilliant!
