Photo of the Day, November 6, 2009: Newburyport Night 1
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Week Around the Ists, November 1–7
Sunday Happenings
Book It: Book Events November 8–14
With these inspiring words, Oliver Morton closed his keynote address at the Fourth Conference on Clean Energy, which Bostonist was fortunate enough to be invited to yesterday morning. Morton, the author of the recently released Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet (stay tuned next week for a review and perhaps an interview!) shared his belief that photosynthesis has the potential to inspire new sources of energy in the 21st century.
In addition to all of the numerous and well-known problems with fossil fuels, our use of stored sources of energy, such as oil and coal, has precipitated a great misunderstanding about what energy really is and where it comes from. Remember that in nature, energy is never created or destroyed. Thus it cannot truly be “used up” like running out of gas in your car, just converted to a different form. Morton capitalized on this knowledge by stating that we can take advantage of the flows of energy that already exist in nature, such as those in photosynthesis.
Rarely stated among all of the lofty rhetoric about climate change is that most of the current policy proposals are simultaneously expensive and insufficient. It will require a leap forward in technology to completely zero out carbon emissions within 50 years, which Morton believes is necessary to avert catastrophe.
Instead of the disastrous biofuel programs in place now, he suggested two changes in the short term to better tap into the power of plant energy. First, the use of “energy crops” in rotation with food provides for a more efficient use of our existing farmland than turning our existing food into fuel. Also, additional work with algae—which can be stored in vats in the desert if necessary—may provide a way to derive energy from these single-celled critters. Synthetic biology (which you should all be experts in now) will be required to maximize the return from these improved biofuel sources.
Looking ahead even farther, Morton addressed the “flows, not fuels” concept by advocating a direct modification of photosynthesis to our benefit. These photosynthetic hacks include enzymes which can produce hydrogen or methane instead of sugar. Finally, he stressed that such programs are not a silver bullet to cure our energy woes—nothing of that sort seems particularly likely—but that they should be one important aspect of our future technology.
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