Renewable Energy: Solar Fuels 2011

A major challenge for society is to meet the increasing need for energy and at the same time reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. New sources of energy that offer a large-scale, sustainable energy supply must be developed. Solar energy is one of the few alternative energy sources that could be scaled up to meet our future demands. More solar energy reaches our planet in one hour than is consumed by mankind in a year, and consequently we would need to harvest less than 0.02% of this solar energy to fulfill all of our energy needs. Of particular interest is the development of solar fuels, which are carbon-neutral, concentrated energy carriers with long-term storage capacity produced by energy input from solar irradiation. Solar fuels are expected to become an important contributor to our future energy systems. Major fundamental research efforts and important discoveries are needed before solar fuels can become a technology, however, and this research field of is currently growing very rapidly.

The conference will present and discuss current science that underlies solar fuels production, and will focus on direct production pathways for production. Thus, recent advances in design and understanding of molecular systems and materials for light capture and conversion of relevance for solar fuels will be discussed. An important set of topics will be homogeneous, heterogeneous and biological catalysts for the multi-electron processes of water oxidation, hydrogen production and carbon dioxide reduction to useful fuels. Also, progress towards integrated and scalable systems will be presented.