Burning plants would be closer to thermal energy. Also, plants and other organic stuff can have other energy sources than the sun, like the heat from Earth's core.And the article is not about burning plants, it's about producing oil from plankton... I have no idea how they can do that, but if they can, it's pretty much awesome. Sure it doesn't completly fix the pollution problems because in the end, it's still oil burnt. But apparently, the consequences of its production/extraction are much smaller. And also, if we could use solar energy more effectively, we wouldn't have any problems. The article also says that the oil output per square kilometer is ~50-100 times greater than common seeds that could be used for the same purpose, so if they harvest all the plankton of all the oceans, I'm pretty sure it would power up more than just Spain. By the way, using corn or other land organic oil for fuel is stupid as !@#$%^&*. Takes way too much land to be a 'good' thing. I kind of agree that this can not solve the all the world's problems, but I think it's still a great innovation. I'd personnaly go with nuclear power as well... nuclear waste could just be sent in space or something