[DrJosiah]

(warning: I am not a biologist)

The problem is that generating ATP requires sun or sugar in plants (depending on the specific metabolic process involved), and that the total amount of sugar produced during the day as part of photosynthesis is tiny relative to the amount of ATP necessary to fuel the light at night.

Consider that humans burn 100-150 kilos of ATP daily (according to Wikipedia). This is only possible because we are recycling ATP continuously, fueling the recycling process with sugar and oxygen that we consume at rates several orders of magnitude higher than what a 20 year old tree could produce in the same period.

I can't find numbers for peak sugar production in plants, but considering how many maple trees it takes to make a single small container of maple syrup, I think this is a reasonable statement to make for now. I will stand corrected if someone has good numbers. :)

[Dylan16807]

Well apparently a tree can permanently sequester "up to 48 pounds" of carbon per year (numbers are unclear, some mix up carbon and CO2, bamboo is more, but it makes a good ballpark max). Let's assume a tree that glows instead of growing for simplicity. 48 pounds, times 30/6 to get the number of ATP produced per carbon atom, times 507/12 to account for how much heavier ATP is than carbon, comes out to 12.6 kilograms of recycled ATP per day.

[DrJosiah]

One order of magnitude, I stand corrected :)