(Image source from: ThePrint)

An India-origin scientist Govinder Singh Pawar has stepped closer to moving to a pollution free world, creating a photoelectrode - a semiconductor that can store solar energy in more efficient way than any other method and as well use it to generate enough voltage to extract hydrogen from water.

Pawar, a scientist at University of Exeter, Britain has been working on this project for about past two and half years as his PhD. He said that over 85 percent of the world’s energy today is sourced from fossil fuel all over the world.

“The amount of energy we consume today is only half of what it is expected to be in 2050,” he explained in his new paper that was published in the science journal ‘Nature’ in February.

The emerging threat of climate change and perpetual human fight over oil, the time is way past to find a sustainable and alternative source of fuel that is scalable and can be implemented widely.

Pawar’s parents moved to Britain over 20 years ago. He completed his Master’s at Loughborough University. In his third and fourth year of college, Pawar realized he was most beguiled by his research projects when they related to energy.

“I was always interested in electrochemistry and physical chemistry. New sources of energy for the future in a green and sustainable way had interested me greatly. I wanted to pursue a PhD related to that,” Pawar said.

Now, he set out to aid in solving one of the the planet’s biggest problems, under the guidance of Dr. Asif Tahir, who also supervised Pawar for his paper.

If Pawar’s material has scaled well, it could be one day be an effective cost-saving technique in propelling a large part of the world into a hydrogen economy.

By Sowmya Sangam