Scientists sust invented a more efficient way to turn sunlight into unlimited, renewable fuel

ScienceAlert: Life has been soaking up sunlight and storing it as a fuel source for billions of years. But scientists have just put a new twist on this ancient process that could finally provide us with the efficiency we need to compete with fossil fuels.
A study led by the University of Cambridge in the UK has resulted in a better way to split water into hydrogen and oxygen by linking a photosynthesis pathway with an enzyme called hydrogenase.
While there’s nothing new about breaking water apart to create a clean supply of energy, most methods to date have relied on expensive catalysts, making it a challenge to go economy-size.
This new process could change that.Photosynthesis is the rearrangement of water and carbon dioxide into glucose, locking up light energy for later use while releasing free oxygen.It’s done a good job keeping plants, algae, and certain bacteria alive for a few billion years, and is ultimately responsible for making the fossil fuels we now burn by the tonne.But it’s not overly efficient as far as energy capture processes go. After all, plants only need a few percent of the energy that rains down from the sky each day.
And freeing that energy now stored as coal comes with the problem of also freeing all that carbon dioxide, which, as we know has unleashed its own problems.
Scientists have now invented a semi-artificial version of photosynthesis that improves on nature’s formula, reactivating a long-abandoned process that evolution had left behind.