One little problem is that that photo synthesis in real organisms is less than 6% thermodynamically efficient in converting light into plant material (often much less). That's before anything required to turn it into hydrocarbons (either by external processing or directly within the organism). The basic chemical reactions allow for somewhat higher theoretical efficiency, but just how well that can be engineered is debatable. After all, evolution has had the odd few billion years to work on the issue.
What this means is that huge areas would be required to produce all the hydrocarbons we currently use. After all, for the great majority of human kinds history, bio-fuels are all we had at vastly lower population densities and levels of personal consumption. No doubt we can improve on growing trees to burn as fuel, but it's very unlikely to match using up the stored energy resources laid down over hundreds of millions of years as the direct, and indirect result of photosynthesis.
What we really require is something which is much more efficient at turning solar (and thermo-nuclear) power into synthetic hydrocarbons which are, the article says, conveniently energy dense and (relatively) safe and cheap to store and handle.
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Photosynthesis & thermodynamic efficiency
One little problem is that that photo synthesis in real organisms is less than 6% thermodynamically efficient in converting light into plant material (often much less). That's before anything required to turn it into hydrocarbons (either by external processing or directly within the organism). The basic chemical reactions allow for somewhat higher theoretical efficiency, but just how well that can be engineered is debatable. After all, evolution has had the odd few billion years to work on the issue.
What this means is that huge areas would be required to produce all the hydrocarbons we currently use. After all, for the great majority of human kinds history, bio-fuels are all we had at vastly lower population densities and levels of personal consumption. No doubt we can improve on growing trees to burn as fuel, but it's very unlikely to match using up the stored energy resources laid down over hundreds of millions of years as the direct, and indirect result of photosynthesis.
What we really require is something which is much more efficient at turning solar (and thermo-nuclear) power into synthetic hydrocarbons which are, the article says, conveniently energy dense and (relatively) safe and cheap to store and handle.