Caltech Gets Money for Solar Technology Development

Hector Gonzalez, Staff Writer
PASADENA - Caltech will get $122 million over the next five years to develop cutting-edge technologies for converting sunlight into fuel, the U.S. Department of Energy announced Thursday.
The funding will establish an Energy Innovation Hub at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena - one of three such hubs the federal government is creating to spur scientific breakthroughs in alternative energy, said Jenni Lee, spokeswoman for the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C.

Working with scientists from the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, researchers at Caltech's new Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) will try to simulate how the sun turns chemicals into energy and figure out how to make the process commercially viable, Caltech and DOE officials said in a news release.

Sen. Diane Feinstein, in a statement, said if researchers succeed in creating "artificial photosynthesis," it would "revolutionize the energy sector." "It would help scrub the atmosphere of excessive carbon dioxide, help eliminate our dependence on oil, and generate an innovative industry in the heart of California. This is very exciting," she wrote.

Caltech President Jean-Lou Chameau said researchers there are up to the challenge.

"Caltech's history of solving the most difficult, multi-disciplinary, scientific problems ... make us uniquely suited to help make fuels from the sun an efficient and economical part of our nation's energy strategy," he said in astatement
Funding for the new Energy Innovation Hubs will come from congressional appropriations. The innovation hub at Caltech, to be led by chemistry professor Nathan S. Lewis, will receive up to $22 million this fiscal year, and an estimated $25 million per year for the next four years, DOE officials said.

The Caltech hub is one of three that will receive funding this fiscal year. In May, DOE officials announced the selection of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory as the site of an Energy Innovation Hub that will work on breakthroughs in nuclear power.

The selection of a third hub, which will focus on creating more energy efficient buildings, has not yet been made, Lee said.