http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf "A Look Back at the U.S. Department of Energy's Aquatic Species Program-Biodiesel from Algae"
A very informative 328 pages report, first paragraph: " Executive Summary >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 below: " -- Michel
