This Technology Could Solve the Climate Change Problem by Generating Low-Carbon Fuels from Sunlight.

Carbon Emission at the heart of  Climate Change.
Image Credit to GeekSnack

Like it or not, most of the world people depends on crude oil and its products and other heavy carbon-emitting fossil fuels such as coal for one of the most important needs in life-energy (from petrol and diesel for cars and other vehicles through gas for power plants to generate electricity for cities to other fuel products used in many other dimensions). Every day hundreds of millions of litres of gas and other related fuels are burnt in one way or the other to meet this basic need for energy. While the basic need, energy, is being met, the basic need of our environment -including the atmosphere of which the ozone layer is part; the water bodies; and the green lands--which demands moderate waste output from us, that is within its recycling capacity, were neglected from the very beginning.

However, the world started to realise the consequences of this neglect and efforts to make amends went into motion. That was when global consolidations to tackle the problem of climate change began to take shape in various parts of the world and from various strata of the society--from the political line, through various social groups to the academia and various research and development industry groups. Significant progress began to materialise in the form of environment-conscious government policies; a change of attitude towards energy use by people in various parts of the world; and technological adventures and innovations and inventions from the academia and research and development industry groups. We began to hear about less carbon-emitting fuel alternatives such as biomass fuel; then came the green energy in the form solar electricity that emitted zero carbon into the atmosphere. These breakthroughs found their way into the various purposes that were being served by the heavy carbon-emitting fossil fuels and the result was solar powered homes and communities; electric cars and trains and power plants that generate electricity with biomass fuel.

Even with all this, the dependence on fossil fuels did not witness a marginal decline. But the need to meet the need of the environment began to experience unprecedented surge. Global conferences by the world's political representatives on addressing climate change issues became almost an annual mandate. However, the truth is that the fossil fuel industry is a multi-billion, if not multi-trillion, dollar one; and a complete shift from it to green energy will be almost impossible (though there are already campaigns going on in several UK Universities and institutions for divestment from future fossil fuel), the least reason being that most of the green energy alternatives have limitations such as low conversion ratio and low carrying capacity--conversion of solar energy into electrical energy is at a less than 2% rate and I'm yet to learn of a solar powered heavy machinery factory. And secondly, countries like the US and Russia are ever expanding their technologies in exploring shale gas from rocks and natural gas in the Arctic region of the planet respectively, never minding the fact that about 80% of the remaining coal reserves, 50% of gas and 30% oil must remain unburnt if the world is to remain below the 2ºC global warming beyond which catastrophes may start manifesting.

Nonetheless, the world already knows this and efforts are now being directed towards creating technologies that will break this low conversion rate barrier. Solar energy powers the activities of satellites in space and even the International Space Station relies on the sun for almost all its energy needs; and just recently a solar powered aircraft completed a record-breaking flight around the world. However, the world is by default aligned with liquid fuel for the most part, according to history itself. So is it possible to find a way to convert the unlimited solar energy into a very light, low-carbon liquid fuel? Well the answer is that a lot of scientists have been experimenting on this hypothesis for some years now. And according to a research published on the 9th of February in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, scientists have invented a technology analogous to the leaf of any green plant in which the radiation from the sun is trapped and used to produce isopropanol, a 3-carbon biofuel (plants produce glucose, a 6-carbon biofuel).

Schematic diagram of bioelectrochemical cell. (A) Water oxidation takes place at the cobalt phosphate (CoPi) anode with proton reduction taking place at the nickel molybdenum zinc (NiMoZn) or stainless-steel (SS) cathode. CO2 is continuously sparged into the cell. The wild-type (wt) bacterium Ralstonia eutropha (Re) H16 oxidizes H2 using oxygen-tolerant hydrogenases (H2ase) to generate reduced cofactors (e.g., NADPH) and ATP, and uses these to reduce CO2 to 3-phosphoglycerate (3PG) via the Calvin cycle. 3PG is then converted into biomass in wt ReH16 or may be diverted in metabolically engineered Re2133-pEG12 into isopropanol. Image Credit to PNAS

The research--which brought together previous works and scientists from Harvard University and the MIT with specialties in Medicine, Arts, Biochemistry, Systems Biology, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Microbiology,Energy, and Bioengineering--involved creating a system integrating what is called a bionic leaf and a genetically engineered bacterium, Ralstonia eutropha. The bionic leaf uses a catalyst to harness the radiation energy from the sun which then splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen; then, the generated hydrogen molecules are fed into the genetically engineered bacterium where an enzyme system catalyzes the transformation of the hydrogen molecules into hydrogen atoms and then into protons and electrons, causing the bacterium to replicate more; afterwards, biochemical pathways in the bacterium which have been re-engineered couple the protons and electrons to carbon dioxide to generate isopropanol. The research team's target is a 5% rate of solar-to-biofuel generation compared to nature's 1% rate, and they are already near the 1% rate mark.

I am fascinated by this research for two reasons. First, it makes use of a free, unlimited and abundant resource, sunlight, to begin its process of power generation. It doesn't entail any exploration of any rock, land or sea as it obtains for fossil fuels, meaning that there's nothing like environmental devastation in the form oil spills and so on. Secondly and most importantly, this new sustainable energy technology makes use of what has been causing the whole problem of global warming, carbon dioxide (a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion), to generate a biofuel. This holds a lot of potential to solving the climate change problem if this technology can be scaled up to a massive level because:

1. I see it incorporating a recycling system where the carbon dioxide emitted from burning the biofuel, isopropanol, is recycled to produce another isopropanol in the ever present, abundant and unlimited sunlight; and this may finally create an equilibrium system of constant biofuel--energy production that could last for generations if all other conditions like constant sunlight exposure and optimal conditions for the engineered bacterium are met--we could have cars, trains and power plants with this in-built system. 
2. I also see the technology rekindling and revolutionizing carbon dioxide capture and storage technology: where the carbon dioxide and other pollutants emitted by fossil fuels are completely captured and stored using various technologies, and then channeled to energy production via this bionic leaf technology. This would ensure that no carbon dioxide artificially emitted into the atmosphere stays there--only those from natural processes like organic matter decay and so on--returning our world back to the hands of nature and safety.

But on the sci-fi end of it, we may come to a time when carbon dioxide would have become so scarce probably after exhausting all the fossil fuels available that it will become a valuable commodity like gold and we may start trading it both for power generation through the bionic leaf technology and for the maintenance of the photosynthetic life on earth-- terms like the Carbon Trading Market may become part of the vocabulary then--and the rich countries may be the ones with the largest carbon dioxide reserves. It's scary right? Don't worry it's never going to happen, just a fantasy in my head, but it could certainly be a great sci-fi motion picture spin-off; and remember to appreciate me if you're the one going to make a cli-fi (climate fiction) movie from this my idea.

And if you think there are other ways this groundbreaking technology or other related sustainable energy technologies can help address the increasing climate change concerns and already emerging problems, you're more than  free to share your thoughts in the comment section. Thanks for your precious time and patience.