A decade at Imperial researching the methods, motivations and worldviews of the great scientific minds, has since been applied to sustainable technology development.

A possible future has thereby been glimpsed where a rapid shift is made to sustainable growth at a faster rate than our present unsustainable growth to avoid its grim consequences by harnessing the coming photonic revolution.

The sun delivers us a full toolbox of great value but the solar technologies we use today, PV and thermal, in effect just burn the box unopened.

However recent advances in photonics, nanotechnology and non-imaging optics now enable us to extract the tools and use them efficiently.

Affordability is achieved by synergising these advances for mass-manufacturing so that, analogously with a combine harvester, a Photon Harvester performs several operations and produces distinct outputs with one device.

This approach can contribute to such fields as free space optical data comms, solid-state lighting, sensors and Lidar. But it is in solar applications that the Photon Harvester is likely to have most impact, perhaps exceeding the combine harvester, though with contrary effects. For with the combine harvester those with capital acquired expensive machines driven by fossil fuels to produce food, replacing people who then left the land. With the Photon Harvester people without capital will return to the land using the sun to drive inexpensive machines to produce food, water, fuel, electricity etc. from neglected plentiful resources including air, sea and waste.

The extensive effects of this photonic revolution on the power, fuel, water, waste, transport and agricultural sectors, representing such a large part of our economy will, unlike the revolution based on our ability to use the electron, giving us the computer, the Internet and the mobile, cause major structural changes to commerce, finance, politics and society.