Saiful Islam: ‘You need more than one electric eel to light a Christmas tree’

Chemistry professor Saiful Islam on his plans to show 'electricity in the raw' during his Royal Institution Christmas Lectures - with the help of 1,000 lemons

Saiful Islam, 53, is professor of materials chemistry at the University of Bath. Later this month he is giving the 80th Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution, entitled Supercharged: Fuelling the Future.

Your Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution are going to be all about energy. What's the next energy revolution going to look like?
Hopefully it is going to be a lot cleaner than it is now. We could have a greater degree of solar power, hopefully a greater deal of electrification of transport - with the renewables we are going to need energy storage. I think that wind will play a part. I think fossil fuels will still be around because they are very energy dense, they are still being dug up and, as we know in China, lots of coal power stations are being built. But if we want to have a really cleaner, more sustainable future, we do need to move over to greener energy technologies.

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