Can marine algae be grown cost effectively in facilities on land to help lower greenhouse gas concentration and forestall dangerous climate change?

Since it is unlikely that society will be able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions before we are committed to dangerous climate change for the next millennium, we must come up with engineering solutions on a global scale. Many geo-engineering options that have been proposed have received well deserved criticism based on environmental and financial concerns. My question is: can marine algae be grown cost effectively in facilities on land so that they provide 1.) biofuels capable of replacing all fossil fuel consumption, and 2.) biopetroleum sequestration products that extract sufficient quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to lower greenhouse gas concentrations below a level committing us to dangerous climate change?

Policy makers continue to focus on carbon dioxide emission reductions while many climate scientists have recently recognized that we cannot get to where we need to be by focusing only on reducing emissions. We need approaches that will extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on a global scale. Reforestation cannot get us to where we need to be and neither can ocean fertilization. However, marine algae 1.) out-produce terrestrial plants by approximately 8-10 times per hectare, 2.) can be grown on land that does not compete with agriculture, and 3.) do not require freshwater. The biggest obstacles are 1.) determining suitable biopetroleum sequestration products, and 2.) getting production scaled up in the next few decades, before we are committed to dangerous climate change.

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