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SYNTHETIC SUN POWER CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS. "The major scientific challenges in artificial photosynthesis fall into three areas: light capture, water splitting (or catalysis), and carbon-dioxide reduction. In each of these areas, nanotechnology and synthetic biology present opportunities for significant improvements."" " http://lnkd.in/dSiUFwU View in LinkedIn

SOLAR ENERGY I. "More solar energy strikes the Earth’s surface in one hour of each day than the energy used by all human activities in one year." This oft-quoted factoid is actually 450 EJ/year of world consumption vs 4,000 EJ/year of photosynthetic production. See next post. A compelling relative scale for a perspective. " " http://lnkd.in/dSiUFwU View in LinkedIn

CYANOCACTERIA'S PHOTOSYTEM II "powers the planet with solar energy. If there is a design that is perfect for harnessing the energy of the sun, this is it. And we want to use nature as a blueprint to design s new generation of bio-inspired solar cells that builds on the efficient design principles of nature."" " http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23816912/ View in LinkedIn

PHOTOSYNTHESIS FOR POWER in the Sustainocene age. "This concept involves all human structures using sunlight to split water as a source of hydrogen (which when burnt as a fuel produces water) and to absorb carbon dioxide and use it to make food or fertilizer."" " http://lnkd.in/dbe42XY View in LinkedIn

MIT PHOTOSYNTHETIC KIT PROTOTYPE. "Within a few years a villager in a remote, off-grid location could “take that bag, mix it with anything green and paint it on the roof” to start producing power, which could then charge cellphones or lanterns." A kit the size of a door could power a home. " " http://lnkd.in/dc7Uggbhttp://lnkd.in/dRZAqQ6 View in LinkedIn

CLEAN TRILLION INITIATIVE. "Billionaire investors and climate-focused policy advocates like hedge-fund founder billionaire Tom Steyer and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin gathered at the United Nations this week to call for more investments in renewables and changes to financial markets that would boost investments, according to Bloomberg. The figure they had in mind? $1 trillion per year—dubbed a “Clean Trillion” by Ceres and others."" " http://lnkd.in/dSt8qyU View in LinkedIn

EUROPE BULLISH ON SUN POWER. "There is growing conviction in Europe and elsewhere that, by 2050, a large proportion of our fuels will come from such “artificial leaves”, and that there is no time to lose starting the crucial enabling research, in order to gain technology leadership in this important future key technology."" " http://lnkd.in/dBdXiU4 View in LinkedIn

PROMISING RESEARCH."By attaching incredibly fine nanotubules to plant cells and drawing the electrons from them, the team has been able to direct the electrons down a wire as electrical current. Testing the strength of the current, they found that it was twice as powerful as electricity gathered from traditional solar cells of the same size."" " http://lnkd.in/Eb-e3p View in LinkedIn

BERKLEY SOLAR FUEL PROGRAM."The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) is the nation’s largest research program dedicated to the development of an artificial solar-fuel generation technology. Established in 2010 as a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub, JCAP aims to find a cost-effective method to produce fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide as inputs."" " http://lnkd.in/dUYGhrb View in LinkedIn

RESEARCH ON PHOTOSYNTHESIS ON THE VERGE "of not only fully replicating photosynthesis, but actually improving it through nanotechnology work under way by large national projects such as Caltech and Berkeley’s Joint Center on Artificial Photosynthesis, the Solar H2 network based at Uppsala University, the Solar Fuels Initiative (SOFI) based at Northwestern University, and Dan Nocera’s work at MIT and Harvard."" " http://lnkd.in/dSiUFwU View in LinkedIn