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As part of a broad effort to achieve breakthrough innovations in energy production, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman announced on July 22 an award of up to $122 million over five years to a multidisciplinary team of top scientists to establish an Energy Innovation Hub aimed at developing revolutionary methods to generate fuels directly from sunlight.

The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), to be led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), will bring together leading researchers in an ambitious effort aimed at simulating nature's photosynthetic apparatus for practical energy production. The goal of the Hub is to develop an integrated solar energy-to-chemical fuel conversion system and move this system from the bench-top discovery phase to a scale where it can be commercialized.

JCAP research will be directed at the discovery of the functional components necessary to assemble a complete artificial photosynthetic system: light absorbers, catalysts, molecular linkers, and separation membranes. The Hub will then integrate those components into an operational solar fuel system and develop scale-up strategies to move from the laboratory toward commercial viability. The ultimate objective is to drive the field of solar fuels from fundamental research, where it has resided for decades, into applied research and technology development, thereby setting the stage for the creation of a direct solar fuels industry.

The Hub will be directed by Nathan S. Lewis, George L. Argyros Professor and Professor of Chemistry, Caltech. Other members of the Hub leadership team include: Bruce Brunschwig (Caltech), Peidong Yang (UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab), and Harry Atwater (Caltech). In addition to the major partners, Caltech and Berkeley Lab, other participating institutions include SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford, California; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, Irvine; and the University of California, San Diego.

The JCAP Proposal Leadership team includes Heinz Frei and Elaine Chandler of Berkeley Lab, as well as Eric McFarland of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Jens Norskov of Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Lab. Also involved at Caltech will be Harry Gray, the Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry; Jonas Peters, the Bren Professor of Chemistry; and Michael Hoffman, the James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science.

– Excerpted from press releases announcing creation of the JCAP. Read the full press releases.