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Research School of Chemistry
Birch Lecture

2nd Birch Lecture

Thursday, 16th April, 2009 @ 11.30am

RSC Lecture Theatre


Personalized Energy:

A Carbon-Neutral Energy Supply for 1 (× 6 Billion)


Daniel G. Nocera

Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, MA USA


A committed science and engineering research effort could make the home into a solar power station and solar gas station in the near future. In pursuing the goal of personalized energy, science and engineering drives inextricably to the heart of the energy challenge by addressing the triumvirate: secure, carbon neutral and plentiful low-cost energy. Because energy use scales directly with wealth, point-of-use solar energy will put individuals, in the smallest village in the developing world and in the largest city of the developed world, on a more level playing field. And the individual will be energy secure as they will control the energy on which they live. More powerfully, the possibility of generating terawatts of carbon-free energy may be realized by making available personalized energy to the 3 billion low-energy users and 3 billion people to inhabit our planet over the next half century.

Personalized energy at low cost presents new basic research targets, many of which are squarely centered in the endeavors of chemical and materials research. Because personalized energy will be possible only if solar energy is a 24/7 available supply, the key enabler for personalized energy is inexpensive storage. Studies of multielectron chemistry and proton-coupled electron transfer have led to the creation of a new catalyst that captures many of the functional elements of photosynthesis and in doing so provides a highly manufacturable and inexpensive method to effect a fuel-forming reaction that provides a carbon-neutral and sustainable method of solar storage - water-splitting.

If science and engineering can decrease the cost of personalized energy through discovery, then the development of the non-legacy world can occur within an energy infrastructure that is of the future and not the past. Considering that it is the 6 billion non-legacy users that are driving the enormous increase in energy demand by mid-century, a research target of personalized energy provides science and engineering with its most direct path to providing a solution to the energy challenge. By developing an inexpensive 24/7 solar energy system for the individual, science and engineering will make available a carbon-neutral energy supply for 1 × 6 billion.

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