Jonathan Trent: Fuels and Tools for a Sustainable Future

Jonathan Trent invented OMEGA, a system to grow micro-algae, produce sustainable biofuels, clean wastewater, sequester carbon, and produce food and fertiliser without competing with agriculture for freshwater or land.

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About Jonathan Trent

“Jonathan Trent is a NASA scientist and adjunct Professor at UCSC. He wanted to understand what politicians meant when they said: “We need an Apollo mission for energy” and he began ‘Global Research into Energy and the Environment’ (GREEN) at NASA.

Leading an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers, he investigated how tools developed for Apollo, and space exploration in general, could be applied to address some of the most pressing problems on ‘spaceship earth’.

He was inspired by closed life-support systems developed for long-duration space exploration. The OMEGA (Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae) project, supported by NASA and the California Energy Commission, is an ecology of technologies in which wastes become resources.

Given the importance of liquid fuels, not only to the transportation industry, but to so many aspects of our society, and considering both the limited availability (peak oil and the location of reserves) and desirability (environmental impacts and national security) of fossil fuels.

Jonathan thinks it’s time we made the transition away from fossil fuel dependence. His talk today is an optimistic glimpse at the future and a reminder that we are not passengers on spaceship earth, we are the crew!”

The VIDEO