Biological Solar

A handful of projects–including an effort by Craig Venter’s energy company, Synthetic Genomics–are now under way to use genetically modified photosynthetic organisms to generate fuels with input energy from the sun.
One such effort is Helioculture, an emerging technology pioneered by Joule Biotechnologies of Cambridge, MA, which can uniquely convert sunlight and carbon dioxide directly into a range of fuels and petroleum-derived chemicals that do not require any additional processing steps. The process consumes no fresh water or agricultural land. But while the organism is important, it is not sufficient. Photosynthetic organisms engineered to produce ethanol or other fuels are grown in special chambers shaped much like solar panels, where they absorb sunlight and generate liquid fuels rather than electrons.

Technology Review