It seems like solar energy will soon be replaced by the newly emerging energy generated from seaweeds.

The U.S. Department of Energy has recently awarded $1.5 million to two of Hawaii businesses for developing offshore seaweed as a probable source for clean energy. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) provided the funding in order to invest in this new type of seaweed energy.

Seaweed can be processed into biofuels that can in turn be used for powering vehicles and homes. In order to turn large-scale cultivation of seaweed into a reality, the ARPA-E program is aiding various projects across the country. This funding will support another substitute to fossil fuel use.

According to reports provided by The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the funding for the two projects will assist in developing seaweed farms and also help them discover methods to harvest them.

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Out of two projects, one of them namely Makai Ocean Engineering of Honolulu was funded $995,978 and was used for creating an ocean model that will assist researchers in designing offshore seaweed farms. The other project, Kampachi Farms of Kailua-Kona was aided $500,000 for analyzing harvesting processes for the seaweed grown on those farms. They will also create an offshore seaweed farm for use in future use in renewable energy production, according to Futurism.

When in the recent days, researchers are in constant search for alternative forms of energy sources be it solar, wind or tidal; the novel form of seaweed energy is now the current interest of researchers.

Other than that, moving a step ahead of using solar power to generate renewable energy, researchers have also discovered ways to transform human blood to energy; use hydrogen fuel for storing hydrogen power and convert normal and seawater into hydrogen fuel.