BERKELEY — In a christening hailed as a key moment in the effort to harness the sun’s energy to create fuel, Lawrence Berkeley Lab officials on Tuesday unveiled a $59 million Solar Energy Research Center.
Named after former Energy Department Secretary and Lab Director Steven Chu, the 40,000-square-foot Chu Hall will be a place of world-changing research in producing cheaper, more efficient renewable energy to replace fossil fuels, said Chu, who was honored for inspiring the mission.
“This is one of the most important problems that science, technology and innovation really need to solve,” Chu said. “It’s a very big deal. … We simply need to save the world, and it’s going to be science that’s going to be at the heart of that solution.”
The facility will be home to the Berkeley hub of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, a Department of Energy-funded collaboration led by Caltech that is attempting to create solar fuel as plants do by using sunlight and other catalysts to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas and convert carbon dioxide into liquid fuels such as methanol and ethanol. The byproduct of producing such a fuel would be oxygen.
Berkeley lab Director Paul Alivisatos said Tuesday’s occasion was a recognition of the lab for being at the forefront of renewable energy science and a representation of its aspirations for the future.
“Our goal for this place is to solve the solar energy problem,” Alivisatos said. “Right now, we can only get energy from the sun when the sun is shining. Then we have to solve the problem of what do we do the rest of the time. … If we can make fuel from sunlight, that problem would really be transformed radically. It could change the picture of how we use energy in the future and create a whole new industry.”
Begun in 2010, the artificial photosynthesis project was renewed for another five years in April at a cost of $75 million. For the center’s researchers, the hope is the experiments done in the building will lead to the creation of clean fuels that could eventually power cars, airplanes and anything else that uses hydrocarbons, while at the same time recycling the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.
“It would create new paradigms of fuel use for the whole world,” said Berkeley lab postdoc and JCAP member Dan Miller, who showed off a working prototype of a solar fuel generator. “We’re using conceptually the same ideas that a plant uses to make its food.”
The Berkeley team had been working out of a rented space in West Berkeley before moving into the new building. The move will not only allow the team more space, but it will also bring together scientists and engineers under one roof, according to Berkeley JCAP department head Frances Houle.
“This building is perfect for the type of work we do,” Houle said. “We’re very far from (our goal), but we’re working very hard to build the foundation for a new industry that will eventually provide very clean, renewable, carbon-neutral fuels for people.”
The processes being developed by the center could be used to produce hydrogen fuel on a large scale within the next 10 years, Houle said.
In addition to housing about 100 researchers in artificial photosynthesis, the Solar Energy Research Center also will be home to the administrative offices of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute, which explores energy science and nanomaterials.
Chu, who toured the facility with a host of dignitaries including California Energy Commissioner David Hochschild and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, said scientists can start to envision a world where solar fuel research results in more cost-effective energy that uses the same infrastructure as current fossil fuels.
“The risks of climate change are very, very real, but if the solution costs three times as much, it isn’t going to be used,” Chu said. “It really has to be competitive with fossil fuel, and indeed there is hope that in a decade, maybe two, this becomes the low-cost option.
“This to me is the most existential issue we’re facing in the long term,” Chu added. “To have some of the greatest minds working on this is as good as it gets.”
Contact Jeremy Thomas at 925-847-2184. Follow him at Twitter.com/jet_bang.
