Biological energy's future

Biological energy experts will be meeting in January to discuss research needs in the areas of biomass, photovoltaics, and photosynthesis, to help flesh out the biology component of the Department of Energy's (DOE) 25-year strategic plan, slated for release next March. Initial meetings on the topic have included a 4-day workshop held in October, entitled "Basic research needs to assure a secure energy future" and organized by the DOE's Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC). However, at a BESAC full-committee meeting held November 5-6, vice-chair Linda Horton, of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), said that the workshop, which covered various forms of energy research, did not include enough biologists to elucidate the scientific opportunities in biological energy research, so another meeting for biological energy alone was scheduled for January.According to Horton, the January meeting will include a handful of people from institutions performing "forefront research" in this area, including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; University of California, Berkeley; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and other "associated universities on the West coast." No location has been set, but the meeting is likely to take place in San Francisco, Horton said.The three major areas of biological energy research to be addressed there are biomass, or the conversion of stored solar energy in plants to electrical energy and fuels; photovoltaics, the conversion of sunlight into electrical energy; and photosynthesis, the conversion of light energy into chemical energy. Although the meeting has yet to take place, Horton and others were able to speculate about some of the research objectives that are likely to be established. "For example, in order for biomass to be an effective energy source, some radical changes need to take place, including a decrease in the amount of water and chemicals used in this process," Horton told The Scientist. Biomass research is a multi-agency priority, and among the recently announced goals of DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is increasing consumption of biomass-derived transportation fuels from the current 0.5 percent to 20 percent by 2030. The January meeting will also address needs in photovoltaics research, an area of intense interest as far back as the 1950s when then-outlandish solar panels first appeared on rooftops. Within the last ten years, exciton solar technologies, including dye-sensitized, organic, and small molecule solar cells, have begun to render the silicone-based panels obsolete. "These technologies could end up producing electricity more cheaply than today's solar cell technology," said Robert McConnell, senior project leader for photovoltaic fundamental and exploratory research at the DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "but it may take decades for these technologies to displace solar cell technologies," he told The Scientist.According to McConnell, exciton solar cells need to be improved, and for real-world applications they must be able to operate reliably for years. "But they are serious contenders, and we will need to keep exploring these and other yet-to-be-discovered biomimetic concepts." The future of the third area, photosynthesis research, will center on two key issues, according to Eli Greenbaum, of ORNL's Chemical Technology Division. One is finding a way to copy the molecular writing of isolated Photosystem I reaction centers to metal substrates so that light energy can be directly converted into electrical energy.The second is increasing conversion efficiency during photosynthesis. "A major outstanding problem in photosynthesis is linearization of the light saturation curve at all levels of terrestrial solar irradiance," Greenbaum said. "Normal photosynthesis saturates at about 10 percent peak terrestrial solar irradiance, and above that value it saturates," he explained. "If a linear response could be maintained, much greater conversion efficiencies of light energy into chemical energy could be achieved."

Biological energy's future

US energy department focusing on research objectives for next 25 years

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