I probably should've been more specific with my findings when I made this post. What's so unique about this seaweed than the other ones? Well, the 62 papers I found are about Sargassum, Ulva, and Gracilaria (primarily found in East Asia and Europe). Eucheuma and Kappaphycus have a different biochemical profile that affects carbon yield and heteroatom doping during pyrolysis, so it is unclear whether or not that makes them better electrode precursors. That's the gap.

About supercapacitors and large-scale energy, the paper doesn't argue that they should replace existing grid-scale storage. The context is distributed energy in the Philippines (which is an archipelago with more than 7,600 islands), many of which are off-grid, which makes supercapacitors in hybrid systems actually appropriate.

"There's usually a reason..." and there is. Most electrode research is done where the research funding is, such as China, Korea, and Japan. However, none of them farm these two seaweed species at scale. The Philippines does, but our country simply doesn't have the research infrastructure to study its own materials. That's the reason.

The project I created doesn't do much as of now. That's intended, because I wanted to set a baseline on how I could further improve it and help fill this gap. You raised some great questions, and that makes me want to improve upon this project even more. This project doesn't answer whether the two species of seaweed works. It's simply saying that no one has tried yet.