Mary Cruse is the science communicator at the Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus. The facility is used by more than 3,000 academic and industrial researchers across a wide range of disciplines including structural biology, energy, engineering, nanoscience and environmental sciences

The vast majority of climate scientists agree on a frightening truth: the world is getting warmer much too quickly. Global warming impacts on everything, from food resources to international infrastructure. It’s a serious situation – but we have the power to make it better.

As nations, we must commit to reduced emissions targets and, as individuals, we need to think carefully about what and how we consume on a day to day basis. But science can also help, and Oxfordshire-based research is helping to create a greener future for everyone.

Energy sources like solar, wind, hydrogen and biofuels are becoming increasingly important. But in the past there have been barriers to their widespread usage: namely cost-effectiveness and efficiency.

We’ve already made huge progress, but there’s still more that can be done. And so scientists are using the county’s world-leading science facilities to develop the next-generation of renewable energy technology.

Photovoltaic polymers are a particularly exciting area of research. We currently use large, solid solar cells to harness the sun’s energy. But if we could get the same effect from a polymer, we would have something very different: solar cling-film or paint.

Imagine coating London’s skyscrapers with a transparent, solar paint – we could instantly transform them into powerful sources of green energy. Photovoltaic polymers already exist, but scientists are now looking at ways of making them more efficient so that they capture enough of the sun’s energy to make them viable on a grand scale.

And it’s not just solar energy where science shines; when it comes to hydrogen, the potential is huge. With hydrogen fuel cells, it’s possible to convert this element into electrons, generating electricity. The ultimate aim is to have consumer cars running entirely on hydrogen, but there are issues.

Hydrogen fuel cells require costly platinum for the conversion process to work – this makes them prohibitively expensive to run. But just this month scientists on the Harwell campus identified a naturally-occurring enzyme capable of doing the same thing.

If we can work out how to exploit it on an industrial scale, the enzyme could potentially be as useful as platinum and far cheaper to produce, making this a major step towards creating a viable hydrogen economy.

As it happens, nature may hold the key to unlocking many new forms of energy production. Biofuels are fuels produced by biological processes, and these reactions occur all the time in nature, like in fermentation or photosynthesis.

Scientists have turned to an unlikely character in their search for sustainable biofuels. The wood-eating gribble is a type of minute crustacean that lives in shipwrecks and driftwood. By exploring the gribble’s genetic blueprint, scientists have been able to pinpoint a key enzyme that converts wood into biofuel.

To survive the gribble’s salty sea-water environment, the enzyme has to be robust – this makes it a great candidate for use in industrial biofuel production, as it may well be able to withstand the harsh chemical conditions involved in the process.

The gribble enzyme is one of many promising areas of biofuel research and, in the coming years, scientists will be looking to biological reactions as a sustainable alternative to the geological processes that transform prehistoric matter into fossil fuels.

In the future, we can expect to see renewables become an increasingly prevalent element of the energy mix. And this is good news for us; it’s good news for our children, and it’s good news for the planet. Thanks to Oxfordshire’s world-class science infrastructure, we’re all a part of something fundamental: the mission to create a cleaner, greener world.