Molecular Mechanisms for the Biological Storage of Renewable Energy

Abstract Recent and ongoing discoveries in the field of extracellular electron transport offer the potential to electrically power highly flexible, carbon-fixing microbial metabolisms and generate a rich variety of chemicals and fuels. This process, electrosynthesis, creates the opportunity to use biology for the low cost storage of renewable electricity and the synthesis of fuels that produce no net carbon dioxide. This article highlights recent discoveries on the molecular machinery underpinning electrosynthesis and reviews recent work on the energy conversion efficiency of photosynthesis to begin to establish a framework to quantify the overall energy storage and conversion efficiency of electrosynthesis.