What’s fuelling your car? Have you ever contemplated that there could be a time when your car could be fuelled by a leaf? Okay, maybe not the green ones you see on trees. Maybe, not the painted one in the O Henry story. But, a kind of artificial leaf that’s said to be able to mimic plants by capturing sunlight.
That’s what researchers from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory along with international collaborators seem to think. So, technically, people won’t be stuffing leaves into the fuel tanks of their vehicles. But, it seems like the artificial leaf, once it does its capturing, is able to convert all of that into liquid fuel. That’s what’s claimed.
That liquid fuel could be collected and stored, just like gasoline. There was a notion, at one point in time, where it was ideated that a car could be powered by alcohol. Maybe this leaf fuel can be mixed with ethanol to power a car. Does India have the ethanol x leaf fuel blending infrastructure? The fuel can be made anywhere sunlight shines. That’s a big wow.
Using leaves as a way to not have to burn fossil fuel resources sounds cool, in theory. No more heating up the planet, no more polluting the air. Fuel is being created without needing to extract it from the ground. The power of the sun in the palm of your hand. Dr Otto Octavius would be proud.
This might go way beyond solar panels, which capture sunlight to turn it into electricity. A fake leaf as a mini-chemical factory makes for a great headline. Of course, at this point, this is still early-stage research. But, it could be enough to get India piqued. Maybe, it might get some Indian entrepreneurs to want to get in on the ground floor. Get to the root of the issue.
It’s said that India imports about 85% of its crude from producers around the world, including the US. And India buys petroleum worth $20 billion from the US. If this leaf energy tech could be scaled up, could it mean a new frontier in CleanTech? Even more dramatically: could it mean India would have sovereign energy? And it’s not like India doesn’t get much sun. Plus, with all the carbon-intensive sectors in India, is there a chance to decarbonize the hard-to-electrify sectors with this leaf energy tech?
Could this be a low-CAPEX climate technology enough to get someone interested in forming a startup? Probably not. Maybe, India has the engineers, has the affinity towards science and might even have the labs. Where are we on patient capital?
Humans are worried about AI and machines replacing them. Now, even plants have to get insecure about being replaced by ALI: Artificial Leaf Intelligence. Someone, please copyright that.
Will someone from STEM get to build a leaf energy startup in mint condition? Will they beleaf in themself to get it done?
