America’s gluttonous demand for energy shows no signs of abating anytime soon. We burn through 20 million barrels of oil per day and are projected to use 28.3 million barrels per day by 2025. In order to meet that demand, Department of Energy analysts estimate that we’ll need to double the amount of oil we import. And that is just the appetizer. Spencer Abraham, who served as Secretary of Energy during President George W. Bush’s first term, has blithely predicted that America’s growing electric power needs can be met only if we build between 1,300 and 1,900 new power plants by 2025.
For solutions, scientists are going back to basics—to the sun, but not to photovoltaics, the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity. After decades of failed promise, photovoltaics remain expensive and inefficient and account for less than .03 percent of the electricity supply nationwide. The smart money is on innovative efforts by biologists to genetically hijack photosynthesis, the processes that plants and other organisms use to turn solar rays into molecular energy.
Photosynthesis, of course, is the original source of fossil fuels. In past ages, the remains of plants and organisms that consumed sunlight ended up in deposits in the Earth’s crust, where they were converted over millions of years into coal, oil, and gas. We’ve depleted much of that photosynthetic treasure trove in less than two centuries, so some scientists are looking to genetic engineering as a means to turn various living organisms into more efficient energy producers.
