If America started using more renewable energy from the sun and wind, what would happen on days filled with clouds and no breezes? Well this challenge may now be solved by the discovery of a microbe that converts electrical energy from the sun and wind, and stores it as methane. The new microbe creates methane at 80 percent efficiency, thus potentially transforming renewable electricity into natural gas, which is a much better way to store energy than in electric batteries. There is, of course, a certain irony to this breakthrough discovery – namely that by using this technology, one is taking so-called “green energy” from the sun and wind and turning it into, you guessed it, a fossil fuel. One wonders what Al Gore would think of that?