Professional Summer Course

If you are taking PI.70s and are looking for course materials click here

MIT Professional Institute - Summer Short Courses (http://web.mit.edu/mitpep/pi/)

Renewable Energy: Capturing the Sun ( http://web.mit.edu/professional/short-programs/courses/solar_energy.html)

Course Director: Daniel G. Nocera

July 27-31, 2009

OVERVIEW

The supply of secure, clean, sustainable energy is arguably the most important scientific and technical challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. Rising living standards of a growing world population will cause global energy consumption to increase dramatically over the next half century. Within our lifetimes, energy consumption will increase at least two-fold, from our current burn rate of 12.8 TW to 28 – 35 TW by 2050 (TW = 1012 watts). This additional energy needed, over the current 12.8 TW energy base, is simply not attainable from long discussed sources – these include nuclear, biomass, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric. The global appetite for energy is simply too much. Petroleum-based fuel sources (i.e., coal, oil and gas) could be increased. However, deleterious consequences resulting from external drivers of economy, the environment, and global security dictate that this energy need be met by renewable and sustainable sources.

Sunlight is by far the most abundant global carbon-neutral energy resource. Solar has the significant advantages of wide distribution, it is the most environmentally sound energy source, and solar has the potential to meet the large scale energy needs of the future. More solar energy strikes the surface of the earth in one hour than is provided by all of the fossil energy consumed globally in a year. Sunlight may be used to power the planet by its conversion into electricity and chemical fuel. But there is a problem. A response to the “grand challenge” of using the sun as the future’s energy source faces a daunting challenge - large expanses of fundamental science and technology await discovery for sunlight-based energy systems to be enabled and a robust energy policy must be developed that permits new solar technologies to be implemented in a competitive energy market.

The solar opportunity represents a high payoff direction with significant reward but there is no escape that the development of this energy source faces tremendous challenges and substantial breakthroughs are needed. Any viable solar energy conversion must result in a 6 fold decrease in the cost-to-efficiency ratio for the production of electricity and a 10-20 fold decrease stored fuels and must be stable and robust for a 20-30 year period. To reduce the cost of installed solar energy conversion systems from $0.25 - 0.40/kW hr to $0.02 - 0.10/kW hr, a cost level that would make them economically very attractive in today’s energy market, will require truly revolutionary technologies that do not exist at the present time. With the current science and technology landscape for solar so wide open, and no obvious “silver bullet” solution to the problem on the horizon, a comprehensive understanding of the solar energy problem and the science that underpins its solution will be the focus of this course.

Science targeting efficient utilization of solar energy is inherently interdisciplinary, involving biology, inorganic and organic synthesis, solid state chemistry and physics, electrochemistry, chemical kinetics and mechanism, and theoretical and computational chemistry/biology. In addition, it involves concepts of homogeneous and interfacial science between solids, liquids, and gases. The course will focus on the science needed from these disciplines to develop the fundamental enabling science that will contribute to, and ultimately lead to a solution of delivering clean energy to society, in the form of chemical fuels, produced from the sun.