Bugs won't be piloting the plane, obviously, because bugs can't get pilot licenses. I hope I didn't give you that impression. But they will be fueling aircraft, says Boeing. At a conference in Australia Boeing's Head of Environmental Strategy said that algae will be the dominant aircraft fuel by 2023.

Darrin Morgan, who handles Boeing's biofuels strategy says Boeing has now established feasibility and that commercial production will soon begin. Boeing conducted the first commercial aviation non-algae biodiesel test flight in February with Virgin Atlantic and GE Aviation, and they now plan the first algae-based biodiesel flight from Auckland to San Francisco this month.

Before you say that this is just greenwashing, let me tell you that Europe won't even let our planes land after 2012 if they can't meet the kind of emissions standards that can be devised by lobbyist-free government, such as they are blessed with in all those other countries. Oh, wait, I see that that harsh rule has been modified recently, after airline industry howls of protest. Now they must just pay a little more to pollute, but they can at least land. Thank goodness for lobbies. In the meantime, meeting low CO2 requirements has hardly hurt Boeing sales, and their fuel-efficient Dreamliner has even caused runups in worldwide carbon fiber prices.

New Zealand has set a similar standard to the EU regulations increasing low-carbon fuel use. The prime minister there has committed to getting New Zealand 90% renewably powered by 2020 - she has made it to 70% so far - and that means planes will have to meet those standards too, when they refuel locally.

So as you can imagine, the New Zealand algae biofuel maker supplying the fuel for Boeing's algae test flight to San Francisco this month, announced in March that Aquaflow Bionomics is now preparing for major expansion.

Even tiny Island nations like New Zealand could easily supply behemoths like Boeing all the algae they need to get us to Europe.

Because of the exponential doubling growth rate of microbes, it wouldn't take a lot of space to manufacture enough algae to power our planes. If we keep siphoning it off, of course. Which, no doubt we will.

Photo via thefraserdomain of algae tanks at Greenfuel Technologies in Arizona