Sunlight to Everything

Sunlight is an inexhaustible resource. Harnessing its power could drive a circular economy to generate energy, reduce carbon emissions, reduce materials waste, and eventually to generate the negative carbon emissions needed to bring our warming planet back into balance.

Research aligned with this initiative focuses on understanding the obstacles to generating all of society's resource needs from renewable sources. This includes electricity, fuels, fertilizers, and other chemicals and materials. We also look to support research that can support changes to our infrastructure for distributing and utilizing these resources, to make sure our society is sustainable and resilient.

• How do we increase the efficiency for solar energy conversion, using more of the solar spectrum?
• How do we produce cheap and energy-efficient fuels, chemicals and fertilizers using sunlight?
• How do we leap forward with electricity storage and efficient electrical grids, enabling renewable baseload electricity?
• How do we capture, convert and sequester carbon dioxide using renewables-driven processes?
• How can data science and machine learning be used to accelerate discovery of new materials and molecules for energy technology applications?
• How can scalable space-based solar power systems be designed to supply energy for the Earth?