U.S. Senator Patty Murray is leading efforts to make sure that Washington state -- already known for planes, software and coffee -- helps carve out territory in another emerging industry: algae.

Murray recently helped secure $2 million for the Washington State Algae Alliance, a consortium made up of Seattle area companies Targeted Growth and Inventure Chemical as well as Washington State University. But not every U.S. politician is on board with the $2 million, with U.S. Senator John McCain calling out the algae research project in a Tweet back in October as more "pork barrel" politics.

Senator Murray obviously cast a different tune in today's press release.

“This funding will support cutting-edge research that will create jobs and continue to position Washington state as a leader in the clean energy economy,” said Senator Murray. “It provides a shot in the arm for Washington state biofuels research, and will help our country move toward cleaner and more efficient energy use.”

Targeted Growth, which is known for its development of technologies to increase yield of biofuel crops, will work on strains of a low-cost blue-green algae while WSU plans to develops light and nutriet bioreactors to cultivate the algae strains throughout the year. Inventure, meanwhile, will work on the conversion of the algal biomass into fuel and other renewable chemicals.

“The Alliance is a perfect example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts,” said Dr. Howard Grimes, Vice President for Research at Washington State University. “This puts some of our state’s top scientists and researchers on the same team to achieve extremely exciting and important breakthroughs for renewable energy and clean technology.”

Of course, the state's biofuel industry is still reeling from the blow up at Imperium Renwables, a biofuel producer that received kudos and support from politicians all over the state. And -- despite that situation -- some have argued that politicians in the state just aren't doing enough to support the clean tech industry.

Can the Algae Alliance help push the industry forward? Of course, algae research is very much in its early days, so we will have to wait some time to see how things play out.

John Cook is co-founder of TechFlash. Follow on Twitter @johnhcook.