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Chemists claim that by mimicking photosynthesis in the lab, they could revolutionize fuel production within five years. Katharine Sanderson reports. Dan Nocera, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, made a bold statement at the American Chemical Society's fall meeting in Philadelphia last month. He claimed that within five years he could build a device capable of producing locally sourced hydrogen gas, which could power all the world's houses, fill people's car batteries and revolutionize energy supply in the developing world. "I guarantee, in under five years, you'll see this," he said.

The thin film solar field is still a hot bed of activity - Technology Review has a post on a prototype cell that uses photonic crystals - Efficient Thin-Film Solar Cells. Researchers at MIT have unveiled a new type of silicon solar cell that could be much more efficient and cost less than currently used solar cells. Materials science and engineering professor Lionel Kimerling and his colleagues presented results of the first device prototype at a recent meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston. The design combines a highly effective reflector on the back of a solar cell with an antireflective coating on the front. This helps trap red and near-infrared light, which can be used to make electricity, in the silicon. The research team is licensing similar technology to StarSolar, a startup in Cambridge, MA.

This book is part of a course which was offered at MIT and is part of there Open Course Work project. This is important for learning what is going on, and why, in the International community concerning Climate Change, and International cooperation.

An MIT class has estimated the carbon emissions of Americans in a wide variety of lifestyles -- from the homeless to multimillionaires, from Buddhist monks to soccer moms --