The development of CO₂-neutral fuels for the future is one of the most urgent challenges facing our society for two reasons; to minimize the effects of climate change and protect against oil price shocks.

The urgency of acting on climate change has been brought into sharp focus by the Stern report and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Currently fuels make up ~67% of the global energy market (Total global energy market =13 TW-yr). In contrast global electricity demand accounts for only 33%.

Despite the importance of fuels, almost all CO₂ free energy production systems under development are designed to drive electricity generation (e.g. clean-coal technology, nuclear, photovoltaic & wind).

In contrast, bio-fuels also target the much larger fuel market and so in the future, will play an increasingly important role in the enrgy market.

The Solar Bio-fuels Consortium (www.solarbiofuels.org) was established to maximise the speed of development of high-efficiency 2nd generation microalgal biofuel systems such as the Solar Bio-H2 process. This process uses sunlight to extract hyrogen from water and can be coupled to atmospheric and industrial CO₂ sequestration as well as desalination.

Here the advances made on the Solar Bio-H₂ project at the level of light harvesting antenna engineering, metabonomics, the development of alternative fuels streams, enhanced bio-H2 production and the development of large bioreactors will be presented.