Solar fuels as a vector for climate change mitigation
Snapshot
GRAND CHALLENGE
MIT Faculty and Researchers
Yuriy Román-Leshkov (lead), Yogesh Surendranath (lead), Martin Bazant, Christopher Cummins, Randall Field, Emre Gencer, William Green, Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli, Sergey Paltsev, Alexander Radosevich, Yang Shao-Horn, Zachary Smith, Gregory Stephanopoulos, Robert Stoner, Troy Van Voorhis, Alison Wendlandt, Bilge Yildiz
MIT Schools/Affiliation
External Collaborators
Gregg Beckham (National Renewable Energy Laboratory),
Ashley Head (Brookhaven National Laboratory),
Chris Tassone (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Research summary
Fossil fuels form the bedrock of our energy economy. However, they are responsible for over 90 percent of anthropogenic CO2 emissions globally. The mission of MIT’s Sunshine to Liquid Fuels Collaborative Network (SunLIFE) is to reduce CO2 emissions by developing new technologies, policy solutions, and economic frameworks that replace fossil fuels in the transportation, industry, and heating sectors with renewable fuels synthesized using sunlight-derived electricity and abundant feedstocks.
SunLIFE’s will provide:
- Pathways towards replacing fossil fuels in the transportation, industry, and heating sectors within the next 30 years.
- Integrated approaches to transition to a low-carbon energy economy with technologies that maximize scalability and social acceptance.
- Multiregional, multisector data to inform policymakers with priority action items to execute the transition towards using solar fuels.
- Job creation opportunities in the renewable energy era.