Our first meeting of the Fall is scheduled for September 10th: Dan Nocera of Harvard University will speak on Transforming Society to a Solar Powered World. The global energy challenge is of wo worlds: a world with a large energy infrastructure already in place (the legacy world) and a world with little to no energy infrastructure (the nonlegacy world). Consequently, in addressing the energy challenge, research must be cognizant of these two different energy worlds as they give rise to different targets. In the legacy world, the fastest path to implementing renewable energy is to integrate discovery with the established infrastructure. This talk will touch on the creation of the coordination chemistry flow battery, which allows for massive grid storage. The research path from bench to large scale manufacturing will be presented. On the other end of the spectrum is the non-legacy world. As will be shown, it is the non-legacy world that will drive future global energy need. Thus, this is the most important target for renewable energy to mitigate global carbon emissions. Two inventions will be presented: Artificial Leaf and the Bionic Leaf. These two inventions rely only sunlight, air and water to create distributed and renewable systems to produce fuel and food within a sustainable cycle for the biogenic elements of C, N and P. These discoveries are particularly useful to the poor of the world, where large infrastructures for fuel and food production are not tenable.
Daniel G. Nocera is the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University. He moved to Harvard in 2013 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and was Director of the Solar Revolutions Project and Director of the Solar Frontiers Center at MIT. Nocera is recognized for his discoveries in renewable energy, originating new paradigms that have defined the field of solar energy conversion and storage. Nocera created the field of proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) at a mechanistic level by making the first measurement that allowed an electron and proton to be timed. On this experimental foundation, he provided the first PCET theory. Within this framework, he is the inventor of the Artificial Leaf and the Bionic Leaf, discoveries set the stage for the large-scale deployment of distributed solar energy for fuels and food production. Nocera has been awarded the Leigh Ann Conn Prize for Renewable Energy, Eni Prize, IAPS Award, Burghausen Prize, Elizabeth Wood Award and the United Nation’s Science and Technology Award for his discoveries in renewable energy. On this topic, he has also received the received the Inorganic Chemistry, Harrison Howe, Remsen and Kosolapoff Awards from the American Chemical Society. He has received honorary degrees from Harvard University, Michigan State University and the University of Crete. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Indian Academy of Sciences, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was named as 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine and was 11th on the New Statesman’s list on the same topic. He is a frequent guest on TV, radio and is regularly featured in print. His latest feature in Leonardo DiCaprio’s film, “Ice on Fire” premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May 2019 and was released internationally in June 2019. Nocera has supervised 168 Ph.D. graduate and postdoctoral students, 73 of which have assumed faculty positions, published over 500 papers, given over 1100 invited talks and 133 named lectureships. Nocera founded Sun Catalytix, a company committed to developing energy storage for the wide-spread implementation of renewable energy. His advanced technologies in energy storage are now being commercialized and implemented by the Lockheed Martin, the largest engineering company in the world. A second company, Kula Bio, is focused on the development of renewable and distributed crop production and land restoration by replacing the biogenic elements from air (C, N) and wastewater (P).
