There is a possibility of tweaking the reactions to produce fuels, such as hydrogen, alcohols or even hydrocarbons, with higher efficiency than we currentlly do, by:

Developing super enzymes and new technologies

Develop super enzymes for high energy efficient production of ethanol or improved technologies for power generation.

Mr Michael Malagiero, in fact, proposes a new track for us. His suggestion follows:

Anaerobic photosynthetic bacteria have the capacity to produce significant amounts of H2 by using sunlight. This H2 can be produced either by hydrogenising or nitrogenising. The bacteria use reductant derived either from solar powered reactions or the oxidation of organic compounds to drive H2 production. By using sunlight and waste organic materials - for example sewage, agricultural or animal wastes - as electron donors to support the growth of bacteria and their subsequent generation of H2, these procedures will not only produce solar-powered H2 but have the added environmental benefit of treating and removing waste products in a carbon neutral process.

This is based on the following observations:

In order to develop this technology for H2 production, we need to:

This will allow development of new technologies for solar-powered H2 production by anaerobic photosynthetic micro-organisms. This will provide significant amounts of solar-derived H2 as a carbon-neutral replacement for fossil fuels. Since every household, farm and town continually produces large amounts of sewage or other waste material there are huge reserves of the required feed stocks to support this solar powered H2 production concept.

To achieve the goals outlined above, research is needed in the following general areas:

We can then take the following steps;

plants