WHAT'S WRONG WITH TUMORS?

Prof. Marchetti asks, in effect And what is wrong with tumors? Or with hydrogen? Let nature manufacture not only hydrogen (and other fuels), but let it manufacture the pipeline terminals as well. Yet his grandiose vision is tempered with a healthy dose of realism.

Marchetti's idea is based on what at first sight looks like the "biomass" concept. It is true that the world's forests not only absorb solar energy, but also store it as what can be used as fuel, shedding about 5 times the world's energy consumption in the form of falling branches, leaves and dead trees. As much again is used by the living trees to make sugars and other carbohydrates from water and carbon dioxide, with solar energy the driving agent and chlorophyll the catalyst.

But to use these trees, which Marchetti calls energy factories, as fuel is crude and uneconomic. Cutting and collecting the wood requires sophisticated machinery and exacts a high price in both money and energy; and even after it has been collected it is not suited for transportation until the energy has been converted to a gas or liquid for piping, by which time it has priced itself out of the market compared with oil or gas.

But there is a biological shortcut: One might program bacteria to decompose the sugars into a useful fuel such as methanol, methane or hydrogen; and one might program bacteria to make the host tree grow a gall with tough skin and spongy interior where the fuel is collected and can easily be tapped by a manmade pipe joining a central pipeline downstream. (A "gall" is an abnormal, tumor-like swelling that can often be seen on the stems of certain trees.)

"All this would sound like pie in the sky," says Marchetti, "if it were not for the fact that the system already exists and operates, on the grand scale common in nature."

Or almost. Rhizobium is one of the bacteria that decomposes sugars. liberating hydrogen but it is not suited for other reasons; on the other hand, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, could be a likely candidate to have its genes and those of its host tree engineered to yield the right type of fuel terminal. The Crown Gall, which can be induced by this bacterium in most broadleaf plants, is not very far away from what is needed. Among the advantages of A. tumefaciens is that it is a parasite which does not kill the host producing its livelihood, a remarkable difference from parasites such as the NRDC and other "public interest" intervenors.

Taking stock of what is available in nature and how much genetic engineering can already achieve, or can do so in the foreseeable future, Marchetti thinks that such "considerations reduce the pipe dream to a complex, but manageable problem. As the parallel dream of transferring the nitrogen fixing capacity to graminacious [grassy] plants has stimulated intensive research, I should say that the problem lies within the mainstream of R& D."

What the problem amounts to is a "proper interface between a vast solar collecting system, the forests, and an efficient energy transportation and distribution system, the [industrial] natural gas pipeline net."

Development of this "biological fix" will be at the limit of scientific and technical competence even in the advanced nations, says Marchetti; but ultimate success appears highly probable in view of the thousands of different galls that have been evolved by a broad variety of organisms.

The prize: All large world regions, including industrialized Europe (and, presumably, Japan), could be energy self-sufficient on the basis of presently forested areas.

At a laughable cost of about $150 per kilowatt, or at least 100 times less than for a purely physical solar power plant.

[More: "Genetic Engineering and the Energy System: How to Make Ends Meet," by C. Marchetti, Research Memorandum RM-7862, Dec. 1978, l.l.A.S.A., 2361 Laxenburg, Austria; (presumably) $3.50, US checks accepted.]