The topic of bioethics raises several main points that need to be considered. Anyone who is planning on introducing GM organisms into the real world would need to consider how they would regulate the possible accidental release of the GM bacteria into open waterways.

Additionally, with regards to the potential environmental hazards, the released GM bacteria could horizontally transfer the induced genes to the endogenous bacteria that are present in the waterway, inducing a potential disease or pest burden through playing more pronounced ecological roles than the wild types. The auxin phytohormone that we are producing could leak uncontrolled into the open waterway, disturbing the normal biosphere. The bacteria could also contribute to the production of virus-tolerant bacteria which would have potential drastic consequences upon the human health and the environmental integrity and induce unknown harms.

Another issue that needs to be taken into consideration is concerning the general ethical aspects surrounding a GM organism. We need to take into account the aforementioned environmental and human health, as well as the fact that the GM strains of the bacteria may be established as persistent populations, which would have susquent subtle and long-term effects on biological communities and natural ecosystems (Weale, 2010). Therefore, we need a risk assessment in order to take into consideration different factors such as genetic contamination, the competition with natural species, ecosystem impacts, increased selection pressure on target and nontarget organisms (Prakash, Verma, Bhatia and Tiwary, 2011).

Another aspect that needs to be considered with microalgal biofuels in particular, is the topic of the ethics of producing a potential unemployment issue in fossil fuel and crop biofuel industries, as well as inducing associated costs to the companies that our project will be implemented towards. Third world countries may not be able to implement our solution due to more stringent policies surrounding GMOs due to less accessibility to knowledge regarding GMOs that first world countries have. Third world countries are also less able to pour in investments in building bioreactors and other facilities, where our project would be implemented. This raises an ethical dilemma regarding how only first world countries would be able to implement our solution and possibly be able to implement biofuels into society faster. Additionally, biofuels usually cannot be used in standard vehicles as these vehicles are built to support petrochemical fuels, such as octane, rather than biofuels such as biodiesel (long chain fatty acid esters). Developing countries would find it difficult to implement the use of vehicles that support this type of fuel (Bailey, 2013).

However, our project relies on increasing the efficiency of microalgal biofuels, which does not require large amounts of land. One bottleneck in implementation of biofuels, particularly in developing countries, is that they cannot afford to give up large portions of land that is used to grow agricultural crops, to produce biofuels (Biofuels: benefits and risks for developing countries, 2022). This could possibly lead to a problem in food scarcity. However, microalgae can grow in bioreactors fitted with LEDs, therefore does not need to take up land that is used for agricultural purposes.