ABSTRACT
The general topic of energy is regarded to be one of the most important areas for any research and development activities at the start of the twenty-rst century. Whereas the worldwide energy consumption and the concomitant CO2 emissions are increasing continuously, the resulting climate changes have been identied to be a major threat upon reaching irreversible levels. Therefore, large research efforts are already based on or will be targeted on the development of clean fuels to replace fossil fuels, the improvement of the existing resources and the discovery of new sustainable energy resources, the establishment of new efcient ways to store sustainable energy, and the replacement of the existing high-energy-consuming technologies with the more energyefcient ones.
