There are, like superior plants, a lot of species of bacterias which could use atmospheric Carbon Dioxide to make hydrocarbons, so why don't we investigate this way of resolving the fateful greenhouse effect ?
Algae and cyanobacteria can generate significant amounts of lipid, but that's not the same thing as making hydrocarbons from carbon dioxide. Once you have a cell that has significant lipid content, you still have to figure out how to isolate the high energy non-mineral associated low hetero-atom content part of the biomass. There are lots of people working on this approach though. http://www.vcerc.org/ VCERC is one group, not to mention several other start-ups and people within large oil companies. Alabama seems to have won the race for carbon negative algal bioreactor http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/20/alabama-gets-first-world-carbon-negative-algae-biofuel/.
As to why we aren't gaining ground faster, I don't know. I hope that helps.
http://www.vcerc.org/
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/20/alabama-gets-first-world-carbon-negative-algae-biofuel/
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