One story we got real excited about in August 2008 about the same time we discovered shale, was the work of Daniel Nocera from MIT on storing solar power:
In one hour enough sunlight falls on the earth to power the world for a year. There are just two problems with solar energy: it's still expensive- and night. But now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have figured out a way to store solar energy when the sun don't shine. To accomplish the technological trick, the scientists sort of turned over a new leaf: their innovative process imitates what nature does: photosynthesis.
Whatever happened to that? Daniel Nocera is still around, still at MIT and still thinking of creating energy through chemistry:
What if you had a solar panel on your roof that could easily make hydrogen from the sun, use the sun's rays to make hydrogen? And you power up your own personal fuel cell, you store that solar energy in the form of hydrogen over time and you just click a switch and use it when it's needed. Well, with the right chemistry and the right catalyst, it might be possible.
Will anything happen here? We don't know. But we should think of possible game changing technologies like these instead of game freezing technologies such as CCS. Carbon Capture and Storage is incredibly expensive and may not work. But even worse it locks the mid 21st century into electrical generation technology from today. Spending a huge amount of money on something like CCS will prolong an already doubtful technology long after it can be supplanted by the likes of stored solar or oilgae or any number of breakthroughs in producing, using and storing energy.
In 2050 CCS may work. It also may be as useful as an electric typewriter, or a fax machine or a video cassette is to us today.

