A Streetlight Powered by Algae: Is This Actually Possible?

The world has too much algae and too little power. Oh yeah, and the climate is changing at an alarming pace. Can't someone build a Rube Goldbergian contraption that addresses all of these problems at once?

Someone has, supposedly. Pierre Calleja of the French start-up FermentAlg (warning: website can put you into instant state of Transcendental Meditation) has designed what is being billed as civilization's first algae street lamp. This glowing canister of microorganisms, a prototype of which is sloshing around in the company's parking lot in Bordeaux, includes this overstuffed bag of features: It doesn't require electricity, drawing power instead from batteries that are charged by the algae's photosynthesis; it helps stop global warming, because the briny microorganisms suck CO2 from the air; it looks a lot like Nickelodeon's famed "green slime" but is not, in fact, made from molding cafeteria food.