Hydrogen is the
fuel for the future,
because in a very
short, blunt sense,
it doesn't leave a
carbon footprint.
When you burn hydrogen, what
you're going to produce,
of course, is water.
The process of photosynthesis
involves the plant taking up
water and carbon
dioxide and then,
through the action of
sunlight, converting that
to basically an
energy rich fuel.
So essentially,
artificial photosynthesis
is where we have some sort of
synthetic material or compound,
which is able to perform the
same function that the plant is
doing, taking the
key, if you like,
molecular architecture
that the plant has and then
is able to split water.
Water is H2O,
oxygen and hydrogen.
It's enormously
important to us as that,
but of course, it
contains hydrogen,
which is, in fact, the
renewable fuel for the future.
And what photosynthesis
is essentially affected
is how to remove that hydrogen
from water in a form which,
if we could mimic, we could
in fact use that chemistry
to convert electricity
into hydrogen very,
very efficiently.
We have the opportunity
to learn one
of nature's fundamental secrets,
to learn from nature how
to do a really,
really difficult job,
and to do it, as
far as we can tell,
to the absolute limits that
is chemically possible.
And in fact, the
plant figured out
how to do that about
3 billion years ago
and changed the world.
