A Look Back at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Aquatic Species Program: Biodiesel from Algae

From 1978 to 1996, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fuels Development funded a program to develop renewable transportation fuels from algae. The main focus of the program, know as the Aquatic Species Program (or ASP) was the production of biodiesel from high lipid-content algae grown in ponds, utilizing waste CO₂ from coal fired power plants. Over the almost two decades of this program,tremendous advances were made in the science of manipulating the metabolism of algae and the engineering of microalgae algae production systems. Technical highlights of the program are summarized in the report.