The Leaf that Will Save the World

I've been upset about the energy crisis for many years.  But I was shocked the other day when I found out that apparently the Earth has been circling a giant ball of limitless energy for the last four-and-a-half billion years.  How the hell’d we miss it?  It’s like we were facing a water crisis on a planet made mostly of water.  But what’s even crazier is that every plant on this planet uses this giant ball of energy to create sugar, which they then use to grow and reproduce.  Now, keep in mind that plants are really really stupid.  If they can do it, we can do it.

            Meet the “Artificial Leaf.”  In the simplest terms, it’s a solar panel that sends sunlight through a process of artificial photosynthesis that results in storable hydrogen (not sugar, sorry).  Amazingly, these leaves are grown, not made, by cooking a wafer of silicon laced with thousands of copper microdots in a silicon-rich gas.  This creates thousands of tiny silicon rods, which are then assembled on the leaf and placed into water.  Sunlight passes through the water, creating electrons, which then collide with the silicon and create oxygen gas.  The oxygen floats away harmlessly, leaving only the protons and electrons behind to eventually mix in the central membrane of the leaf and create hydrogen.

            Think of a giant roll of bubble-wrap, which you unroll across your roof.  A few hours later, you have a tank full of natural fuel.  Now think of an area of land similar to that taken up by all of our national highways.  This is roughly the amount of land needed to power the country.  And why hasn’t this happened yet?

            There are two answers to that:  The first is that, in order to begin this complex form of man-made photosynthesis, there must be a catalyst.  Currently, the only catalysts that exist are very expensive metals like platinum.  The second reason is that hydrogen fuel is still controversial.  This is due to a lot of misinformation, and a lot of information that humans just don’t know yet.  There are a number of articles on hydrogen fuel and the hydrogen economy right here on Greenwala.com.  But the key thing to remember is that when you burn hydrogen, you get water, which is a lot cleaner than all that gunk flying over my head right now in the Los Angeles skyline.  Plus, you get to wave goodbye to the power company, the gas company, and all those foreign oil magnates that hate us.

            The truly intriguing aspect of the artificial leaf, however, is how organic a process it is, and the possible ramifications of such a process.  It’s just depressing thinking that the 20^th century was the only one in which humans would be able to move across long distances at speed, create massive structures, and advance in the kind of way we have.  Conservation is key, but no fun, and anything that allows us to move forward as fast or perhaps faster than we have, is priority number 1 in my book.

            The artificial leaf just received a massive endorsement in the series “Powering the Future” on Discovery/Science Channel.  It’s being aggressively studied in the US, the UK, and India (among other countries), and it’s my guess that it will be on everyone’s radar within five years.  More importantly, it will give BP, Exxon, and all those oil magnates a big ol’ collective reason to start pulling their hair out.  And personally, I hope it happens sooner, because both time and sunlight are awastin’.