"Everyone has been thinking of carbon dioxide as just a pollutant, and that's wrong," said Paul Woods, chief executive of Algenol, which is based in Naples, Florida. "We have to start thinking about carbon dioxide as if it's a reusable, recyclable product."

Dow will feed CO2 emissions from one of its chemical plants in Freeport, Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico to a pilot facility that it will build there to test the process.

Algae,