Artificial Photosynthesis, Bamboo Composites, Piezoelectric Materials, Salinity Gradients, Thermoelectric generators… these are some of the Emerging Energy Technologies (EET) that have recently been looked at by the Materials Unit of the European Commission in a workshop.
The objective of the workshop was to “to identify possible material priorities for emerging energy technologies that would have longer term (up to 2050) commercial prospects” but none of them are, as of yet, viable.
Take Artificial Photosynthesis…
The Report says that the “artificial photosynthesis is a direct way of producing solar fuels without the need of intermediate energy carriers” but “no functioning artificial photosynthetic device has yet reached the level of maturity needed to be useful outside laboratories.”
The research field is so new that “at this point, it is not known which of the different subfields (organic, biological, and inorganic) that will be developed most successfully.”
Bamboo Composite is similar: it aims at cultivating the bamboo locally in order to feed the micro-wind turbines and take the technology away from Chinese domination.
Low Energy Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter is another interesting development. It is based on the Fleischman & Pons effect, once controversial, which records excess energy production between palladium and deuterium (heavy water) which “may be ascribed to a nuclear process only.”
The conclusion of this brainstorming workshop is that more money needs to be devoted to these ideas but none of them are a total energy solution.
“No single technology would be a total solution in itself and that developing an energy mix will become even more important in the future,” is the conclusion of the workshop but the recommendation is that more “research into the structure and properties of materials for energy” should be done.
Of course, one ideal alternative technology would be energy from gravity – a seemingly inexhaustible resource available everywhere and, some say, has something to do with the newly discovered Higgs particle.
Full report on the workshop available here.
