Energy from light and water

The Technology Review has this interview piece with MIT professor Daniel Nocera who believes that photosynthesis may be the solution for renewable power generation and storage.

This seems like a great line of investigation. Natural photosynthesis has an energy conversion efficiency of near 100% which makes conventional solar panels running at 10 to 20% look a bit weak.

There are a few other articles on power generation from photosynthesis that I have spotted recently.

There is this fairly technical overview of an article in Nature about evidence of a quantum effect in photosynthesis that may lead to a better understanding of nature's own solar cell.

And a working model from the University of Tokyo that comes close to mimicking photosynthesis.