THE FUTURE OF ENERGY

A Bug to Save the Planet

Genome pioneer Craig Venter wants to make a bacterium that will eat CO2 and produce fuel.

By Fareed Zakaria | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jun 16, 2008

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  • Posted By: wallabrelmi @ 02/09/2009 7:36:48 PM

    I think this is a great idea and would like to hear more about the economics. Let's get some engineers involved and have them estimate some costs. I suspect the actual engineering would be less expensive and less complicated than a typical refinery, so that leads me to believe it is the cellulose or whatever is fed in that is the greatest cost. However, that cost should be easy to calculate based upon our tree farm costs and could probably be used to calculate cost savings for larger scale operations. This would give us a dollar/gallon of gasoline cost or cost per barrel or whatever, so that we could compare it to the present costs of oil. Go Venter! You showed us once how to do it cheaper and faster than they said it could be done, so please, show us again!

  • Posted By: jcob @ 07/14/2008 12:30:43 PM

    The new drive train in vehicles needs to exist of a small engine that drives a generator, that charges the batteries, which drive the direct electric motor to the rear axle. The system is called Q-Drive and is being developed by a California Company called Quantum Tech.(qtww)The small engine could be gasoline fired, natural gas fired, or in the future hydrogen fired. Will you please do an interview with this company?? They also own a share of Fisker Motors which is developing the Karma and will have it to market next year(2009). Thanks.

  • Posted By: mjkittredge @ 06/14/2008 7:15:59 PM

    Too bad the electric cars of the late 90s were all destroyed, those should have been the solution to all this, instead greed from people in charge ruined the opportunity and now we pay +$4.00 per gallon. What a shame, it didn't have to be this way!

    • Posted By: rc70 @ 06/22/2008 3:49:35 AM

      And where did the electricity come from in those cars you so highly praise? From the local current bush? Most electricity in this country comes from fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas. They release, can you guess? Carbon Dioxide! You cannot get something from nothing.

  • Posted By: Anju Chandel @ 06/14/2008 4:22:54 PM

    Good News! Innovation in energy is a must if we want to inhabit this earth for a long long time to come! Otherwise, in not-so-distant future, humans would be ferried across - if space would still be available - in animal-driven-carts-with-wooden-wheels!

  • Posted By: John Luma @ 06/14/2008 10:06:20 AM

    Another example of innovative thinking, and what it can lead to. Let's hope Mr. Venter succeeds. Now we need you to highlight the dozens of other people like him in other critical fields: Medicine, education, government.
    A great article and a great choice. Keep it up.

  • Posted By: President Lindsay @ 06/12/2008 7:38:23 PM

    Sorry about the double post!

  • Posted By: President Lindsay @ 06/12/2008 7:36:46 PM

    It's a neat idea, but we can already convert all our garbage, agricultural waste, industrial waste, and even hazardous waste into usable fuel and building materials using plasma converters. Anything that we make from oil we can make with the elements recovered from all these sources, including carbon-neutral gasoline, jet fuel, plastics, lubricants, etc. No more landfills, either, with their attendant methane seepage and groundwater contamination. Oil is history! Get with the future.
    Besides, we can do better than running our cars on liquid fuels. Look for Prescription for the Planet in late July from Amazon. It will open your eyes!

  • Posted By: President Lindsay @ 06/12/2008 7:32:46 PM

    Actually we don't need to create new bacteria to do this. We can simply recycle all our garbage, agricultural waste and industrial waste, even hazardous waste through plasma converters. That gives us everything we need to create carbon-neutral fuels, plastics, lubricants, essentially anything we now get from oil. No more landfills, either. It's like recycling on steroids. Besides that you get building materials out of the slag and can recover and reuse all the metals. Oil is history!

  • Posted By: skeptikos @ 06/12/2008 4:11:09 AM

    Is it not like rplicating the natural photosynthesis? What the leaves are doing in the nature. In that case will it not be possible to make food? If synthetic food can be manufactured cheaply it will solve the food problem easily.

    • Posted By: fsilber @ 06/12/2008 3:03:58 PM

      If we had discovered a way to turn coal into oil cheaply and cleanly, it would have solved the oil shortage but we'd still have environmental degradation from coal mining and global warming from CO2. Similarly, if we use genetically engineered microbes to produce an unlimited supply of food, we'd soon face massive pollution by ever-increasing amounts of human feces. Therefore, we need social controls to ensure that this technology is used only for producing motor-vehicle fuel -- and not food.

  • Posted By: cadiaz @ 06/11/2008 9:49:23 AM

    I believe in innovation, in reinventions and in responsablity. Our Planet is hurting and is calling on everyone to do it's part. At 65 years younger, I welcome Craig Venter Fuel Growth Project and hope to have the opportunity to produce my own fuel for my own consumption. Hope those bacterias are affordable so I can have my own microrefinery at home. By the way, I have just started a hidrophonic garden to grow fruits and vegetables on my roof. God bless all who are willing to accept change to aid humanity.

  • Posted By: 11th hour @ 06/10/2008 3:24:25 PM

    Sure we can solve almost every problem, bar 1, us. There are too many people on the planet. Population growth is out of control. Why not tackle the real problem instead of the symptoms?

    • Posted By: perpetualtruth @ 06/10/2008 6:21:27 PM

      How do you propose we "tackle the real problem" then?

  • Posted By: FloydShipman @ 06/10/2008 5:05:59 PM

    Grow fuel. This has been a potential solution for several decades. Apparently it takes a Craig Venter to point it out.

  • Posted By: FloydShipman @ 06/10/2008 5:04:08 PM

    Grow Fuel. This has been a potential solution for a several decade. Why are we now just becoming aware of it?

  • Posted By: smokey_joe @ 06/10/2008 1:25:14 PM

    A bug to eat CO2 and produce fuel? Green algae already do most of that. Greenfuel Technologies has several sites operational now and they're scaling up to consume all of the CO2 emissions at each site - power plants and industrial sites. The algae eat CO2 and release oxygen to the atmosphere. The algae multiply and can be converted to biodiesel, ethanol, cattle feed, fertilizer or plastics. I like the idea of going directly from CO2 to octane gasoline. Maybe they should start with green algae and genetically alter them. But could that endanger the environment if they are released accidentally as will almost certainly happen? Maybe they should work on a bug to convert green algae to octane.

  • Posted By: emmarcee @ 06/09/2008 10:28:05 PM

    I think we were placed on earth to make enough CO2 for the plants..

  • Posted By: singhhp @ 06/09/2008 5:53:43 PM

    I thought that is what any plant does; convert; convert carbon di oxide water and sunlight into energy. So do cytobacteria, the base of all ocean food chains. What am I missing?

    • Posted By: Nins @ 06/09/2008 6:39:55 PM

      The plant takes the energy released from the reactions and uses it to grow. This researcher wants to take that energy and use it power your car, all the while burning up that excess CO2.

      Pretty cool. Hopefully it's the wave of the future. It is time for us to start looking at the big picture, recognizing the end results of our industrial activities (ecologic, social and economic) and learning how to control for bad outcomes before they happen.

      As an aside, I have invested in some hydrogen fuel cell companies and made a bundle.

  • Posted By: jp_negri @ 06/09/2008 2:36:52 PM

    Hm... a bacterium that grows on C02, water, & sunlight. No chance for THAT to become a runaway ecological disaster when it escapes from the refinery.
    I'm a little dissapointed that Fareed Zakaria didn't discuss the potential risks beyond his softballed final question. Usually he's more on the ball than that.

    • Posted By: jgomez_miranda @ 06/09/2008 6:37:04 PM

      Waking up in the morning has a certain amount of risks. If you are looking for something that is zero risk you would never find it. What you do in life is choosing the path with the least amount of risk. For sure sending billions of dollars to crazy people looking to develop nuclear weapons has a lot more risk (not an hypothetical but a very real risk). Containing and management of crops is an engineering problem that can be weight and solved. We have been using yeast (another bacteria) for millenia and we never have a runaway ecological disaster

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