I'm still against it. Burning caloric mass for energy when so much energy is around us is just plain ignorant. We need to move to solar and wind power.
The reason a scalable carbon-neutral liquid hydrocarbon solution is attractive is that it's a drop-in solution to CO2 emissions. Battery-powered cars are neat and might well be the way of the future, but it's a very long play. Even if we had the money to replace all cars on the face of the planet with Priuses, there are some very significant constraints on the production on batteries in the form of rare earth minerals. Also, even if you did that, there's still trucks, ships and airplanes to address, never mind that most of the planet's electricity isn't exactly cleanly produced. The carbon-neutral liquid hydrocarbon solution on the other hand would be applicable without any of those constraints.
No it isn't. What the algae does is exactly it: harness all that "energy around us", which is scattered around and hard to get, in a more efficient manner.
I could see this being used to generate fuel on-site at remote airports or places where its difficult to truck liquid fuel, but electricity is still going to be the way to go. Its just too easy to move it (with HV transmission lines) compared to large amounts of liquid fuel.