![]() ![]() Cut down that tree for firewood and you are utilizing the energy created by this all-natural CO 2 to fuel converter.Īnd if you plant a tree to grow in the place of the one you’ve felled, then it can effectively be a carbon-neutral transaction, as the CO 2 released from the fire becomes food for the new sapling. CO 2 to fuel converters are everywhere, living in pots around the house, or standing tall in the garden.Ī tree, for example, ‘breathes’ CO 2 in, converts it into nutritious carbohydrates via photosynthesis, and ‘breathes’ oxygen (O 2) out. This dream product already exists - almost. His research contributes to the dream product concept of the CO 2 to fuel converter, which produces high energy-density fuel from atmospheric CO 2 with an overall negative carbon footprint. Erb, Director of the Department of Biochemistry and Synthetic Metabolism at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany. This year, the Future Insight Prize has been awarded to Prof. Attached to this annual prize is a grant of up to €1 million to support research into groundbreaking science and new technologies that would help make that dream product a reality. ![]() Since 2019, we've awarded the Future Insight Prize for ambitious dream products in the fields of health, nutrition and energy. īy far the most important contributor to carbon capture, utilization, and storage, though, is neither a company nor a technology - it’s nature. Methods of CO 2 capture and conversion developed by heavy industry, startups and researchers are already turning CO 2 into everything from chemicals and simple fuels like methanol, to plastics and other polymers, to concrete and similar building materials. Indeed, this is a key motivator in the growing ‘carbon capture, utilization, and storage’ field. While that will passively reduce carbon emissions in the long term, we can also take an active role in bringing atmospheric CO 2 concentrations down. ĭeveloping sustainable energy infrastructure and decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels is imperative. In 2021, following a rare dip in energy demand as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, global energy-related CO 2 emissions rebounded and rose to 36.3 billion metric tons, the highest level ever recorded. The use of fossil fuels in energy production is by far the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, primarily in the form of carbon dioxide (CO 2). What’s more, rising demand is outpacing new supply available from renewable sources, so the gap is only widening. Renewable sources only meet roughly 11% of total energy demand, with nearly 85% being satisfied by fossil fuels. But other statistics are less encouraging. According to the International Energy Agency, 29% of electricity produced worldwide in 2020 came from renewable sources like wind and solar, up 2% from the previous year. This project will use new advances in directed evolution and synthetic biology to rapidly progress these two platforms and the synergy between them.Renewable energy infrastructure is growing faster than ever. Engineering temperature resilient Rubisco will create climate resilient crops with improved yields up to 50 percent. Are these microbes the climate-resistant food of the future? Second, rising temperatures directly impede the CO2 fixation enzyme Rubisco. First, fast-growing photosynthetic algae could produce food using thousands of times less land, in a climate-resilient way. This project identifies two paths to improve the productivity and climate-resiliency of agriculture, offsetting these effects and even allowing reduction in land usage. Such expansion, into over a billion hectares of wild habitat, would release hundreds of gigatons of additional CO2-equivalents over the next 30 years. Climate change is on track to severely decrease crop productivity, creating a food and energy crisis and force the continued global expansion of agricultural land to meet rising demand. The climate emergency is also an agriculture emergency. ![]()
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