Calvin Says Green Plants Can Fulfill Energy Needs

America can use green plants to fulfill its needs for oil for "no more and probably less" than the current price of forty-one dollars per barrel, Nobel prize winning chemist Melvin Calvin said yesterday.

"The best solar energy capturing machine is the green plant," Calvin said, adding "We have to go back to using it as we did 100 or 150 years ago."

Plants store carbon in the form of carbohydrates that can easily be converted by fermentation into alcohol, a convenient liquid form of fuel, Calvin said. This process has worked successfully for sugar cane in Brazil and corn crops in the United states, he added.

Answering the charge made by the Mobil oil corporation that the cost of producing fuel from plants is too expensive, Calvin said after his lecture that Mobil ignored the possibility of energy production from the corn stalks and cobs.

Mobil's claim is just "backhanded economics," Calvin said, adding "If what I say is the facts, the facts will prevail, regardless of Mobil."

Calvin, University Professor at the University of California at Berkeley who won the Nobel prize in 1951 for his discovery of the biochemical pathway of photosynthesis, spoke before an audience of approximately 200 in his first of three John M. Prather Memorial Lectures at the Geological lecture hall.

Calvin's next two lectures will deal with his current research on the possibilities of extracting fuel from rubber plants that contain hydrocarbons.