Does the world need a global project on artificial photosynthesis?
Date
2015-04-24
Authors
Faunce, Thomas
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Publisher
The Royal Society
Abstract
This paper introduces a theme issue of Interface Focus derived from papers presented at the Royal Society supported meeting ‘Do we need a global project on
artificial photosynthesis?’ held at Chicheley Hall in July 2014. At that meeting, leaders of national solar fuels and chemicals projects and research presented
‘state of the art’ on artificial photosynthesis (AP) in the context of the policy challenges for globalizing a practical technology to address climate change and energy and food security concerns. The discussions included contributions from many experts with legal and policy skills and uniquely focused on producing principles for prioritizing and specializing work while enhancing the funding and attendant public policy profile. To this end, representatives of major public, philanthropic and private potential stakeholders in such a project (such as the Wellcome Trust, the Moore Foundation, Shell, the Leighty Foundation, the EPSRC and Deutsche Alternative Asset Management) were invited to provide feedback at various points in the meeting. For this Interface Focus issue, speakers at the Chicheley Hall meeting were required to present a snapshot of their cutting edge research related to AP and then draw upon the Chicheley Hall discussions to innovatively analyse how their research could best be advanced by a global AP project. Such multidisciplinary
policy analysis was not a skill many of these researchers were experienced or trained in. Nonetheless their efforts here represent one of the first published
collections to attempt such a significant task. This introduction contains a brief summary of those papers, focusing particularly on their policy aspects. It then
summarizes the core discussions that took place at the Chicheley Hall meeting and sets out some of the central ethical principles that were considered during
those discussions
Description
Keywords
artificial photosynthesis, carbon dioxide fixation, nitrogen fixation, food and fuel security, environmental sustainability, Sustainocene
Citation
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Source
Interface Focus
Type
Journal article
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Access Statement
Open Access