About Greg Mitchell, Contributor to “Renewable Energy Facts and Fantasies” – Scripps Institution, Algae

Dr. Mitchell contibuted to the book’s chapter on algae as biofuel. 

Fundamentally, the photosynthetic process reduces inorganic compounds like carbon dioxide, water, nitrogen, and phosphorous, and builds these biochemicals. Initially sugar, and then the sugar’s burned to build all sorts of other things, and nutrients are brought in and you build membranes with phosphorous and you build proteins with nitrogen and so forth. It is all ultimately derived out of the sunlight.