As the ages passed, the pressure of layers above and heat from inside the earth broke down and reassembled these simple plants and animals into chains of carbon atoms bristling with hydrogen.

FORBES: The Promise And Pitfalls Of Canada's Oil Sands

Moving from Hackney to Herefordshire, ending flat broke in 1992 with "just the children's clothes in suitcases" it is not a simple story of tending the plants.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Wales | Mid | 'Poet for ever' urges laureate

"We can do simple things like planting bee-friendly plants and flowers to encourage bees into our gardens, " he added.

BBC: Bee Part of It with BBC Surrey and keep bees buzzing

The reason is simple: gas is abundant and cheap, and the power plants that use it are also cheap.

FORBES: Egypt fallout -- follow Exxon and T Boone Pickens; go long natural gas and frack-baby-frack

Zhang lead a Virginia Tech team that developed a way to produce large quantities of hydrogen from xylose, an abundant simple sugar that makes up 30 percent of the cell walls of plants.

FORBES: Could Hydrogen Breakthrough Revive The Fuel-Cell Car?

"Phytoremediation is the use of plants to remove contaminants from the environment and to render them harmless, as simple as that, " he says.

CNN: Flower power

This will make it possible to realize a simple and compact system for capturing and converting wasted carbon dioxide from incinerators and electric generation plants.

ENGADGET: Panasonic Photosynthesis System converts carbon dioxide to organic material with plant-like efficiency

One simple way that coal plant managers can adopt is to simply replace part of the coal they load into their plants (up to 20%) with dried biomass like sawdust, wood chips, dried walnut shells, etc.

FORBES: Moving Beyond The Symbolism Of Earth Hour