Shining light on artificial photosynthesis

This year the Olympics come to the UK, and billions of pounds have gone into building the state of the art facilities that the athletes will compete in over the summer. But what if the Olympic stadium – or premier league football grounds – could double up as power stations, providing us with clean fuel?

The idea isn’t so far-fetched. Stadiums can be covered with solar panels to soak up energy from the sun. The problem is that the energy has to be used straight away. What would be really useful would be to find a way to store that energy, so it could be used when the sun goes down.