Ian On The Red Dot

Interesting article about work being done to create bugs that eat waste and excrete oil over at TimesOnline.

To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

The interesting thing is that they aren’t trying to change the whole system, just what’s distributed though the system.

What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.

Now, they only need to figure out how to mass produce this stuff.