With the help of engineered microbes, the MIT Researchers have turned the emissions of power stations, steel mills and garbage dumps into liquid fuels. The process has been successfully trialled at a pilot plant in China and a much bigger facility is now planned. Energy-dense liquids are vital to transport but are currently derived from oil, a fossil fuel, and transport produces about a quarter of the global carbon emissions driving climate change. Biofuels have been seen as possible replacement, but current biofuels compete with food production and have been blamed for driving up food prices.

Using waste gases to create low-carbon liquid fuels would be a major advance in the battle against global warming if they could be made at low cost and large scale. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) process uses bacteria to convert the waste gases into acetic acid – vinegar – then an engineered yeast to produce an oil.

The patents for the process are owned by MIT and have been licensed to GTL Biofuel Inc. Its pilot plant outside Shanghai ran successfully from September 2015 and a larger “semi-commercial’ demonstration plant, 20 times the size, is set to begin construction.

Like MIT, the US company Lanzatech uses microbes that can ferment gases into more complex molecules, a skill originally evolved so the bacteria could thrive at bubbling, hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. Another US company, Catalysta, is working on converting methane into hydrocarbon fuels.