IIRC, wasn't the price point for a bio-gas (made from atmospheric CO2) something like $4/gallon?

If that's true then it's revolutionary. I'm sure that price point makes Americans clutch their pearls, but in Europe gas already costs a lot more than that.

This article [1] says the cost point is closer to $34 per gallon (back in 2009).

[1] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/algae-biodiesel...

I mean... vegetable oil is 5 bucks a gallon at Wal-Mart and you can run diesel vehicles on it almost unmodified. I'm struggling to see the problem here.

> I’m struggling to see the problem here.

The demand curve would push out dramatically.

The supply isn't fixed. We already know it's possible to economically produce vegetable oil at 5 bucks a gallon. If demand rose, supply would rise to meet it. If anything, increasing scale would reduce the price.

Also, we have a ton of supply for free to start with. All the oil we use right now is still usable for fuel even after it's used up for cooking. Food grade oil is a higher grade product than fuel grade. Most of it is just wasted now.

I'm not saying we should build our entire energy infrastructure off vegetable oil. There are probably cheaper, better ways. But the market will sort that out. The point is we don't have to give up oil - we just have to give up digging it up. Biofuel isn't some remote and impractical future tech, it's something we throw away millions of gallons of right now.

Mass produced food has a pretty elastic supply.