http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/3/30/174742/372#9
Algae has its place
But the first big step ought to be plugin hybrids charged up with renewable electricity, mainly from large scale wind.
Then distributed solar and small and medium scale wind. And then the upgrade of the national grid with a high voltage DC system for balancing and eventually storing renewable power.
With plugin hybrid drivetrains liquid fuel use can be reduced to 10% of present requirements. Oil will then drop in price, rendering fuel farming bankrupt.
By the time domestic oil supplies run out at that lower rate of use (maybe 20 years), algae biodiesel combined with even better batteries that further reduce liquid fuel use, can step in to replace oil completely.
Work on algae, but build out large scale wind and mass production and conversion of vehicles to plugin hybrid immediately. These are the victory ships, jeeps, and bombers to win this world war against global climate disaster.
Stop subsidies for fuel farming now and divert those funds to these first necessary steps. Fuel farming is merely an effort to buy farm state votes with their own tax dollars.
Tax dollars wasted to boost the profits of agribizz corporations who kick back 1 dollar in campaign "contributions" for every 1000 tax dollars stolen (an aproximation of the usual ratio, halliburton is more like 100,000 stolen to 1 dollar in bribery).