“This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind,” said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. “The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”

I’m getting a little jaded with ‘gee whizz’ stories promising cheap abundant energy, but this kind of ‘water splitting’ technology does seem to be potentially the most efficient (and cleanest) path to getting us off fossil fuels. The process involves using solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, both good sources of energy. ‘Water splitting’ used to be prohibitively expensive, but scientists at MIT have found a way to get more ‘bang for the buck’. More power to them! Read more about it at the MIT site.