Humanitity’s Top Ten Problem for next 50 years*

• DEMOCRACY• DISEASE• EDUCATION• ENERGY• ENVIRONMENTS• FOOD• POPULATION• POVERTY• TERRORISM & WAR• WATER

1.ENERGY2.WATER3.FOOD 4.ENVIRONMENT5.POVERTY6.TERRORISM & WAR7.DISEASE 8.EDUCATION9.DEMOCRACY10.POPULATION

*Adapted from a presentation by Richard Smalley At the MIT Enterprise Forum 22/01/2003

• 15-17 TW is used 25-27 TW in 2050; 85 % fossil fuels

and 13% other sources

• Converting 10% of solar energy on 0.3% of land

surface would suffice the projected demand in 2050

• 37Gt of CO2 to day and it can go up to 43 Gt in 2035

• CO2 cycle involves about 90Gt

• Methanol economy

The Situation Today

Where is that energy going to come from?

The world’s energy needs will be growing much

more steeply from now than at any time since the

beginning of the industrial revolution. There is no

doubt that we will need much more energy in 2050

than now.

THREE CHOICES

• RENEWABLES• FOSSIL FUELS• NUCLEAR

Bottom Line - A reasonable goal for 2050

is a three-way mix of all

Reproduced from Yasuo Izumi, Co. Chem. Rev., 257,171 (2013)

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I

hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

I wish I had more years left.”

Thomas Alva Edison 1930

The amount of solar energy that falls on the earth’s surface in 40 minutes equals

the total annual energy consumption of all the world’s people.

(Texas Solar Energy Society)

http://www.txses.org/solar/content/solar-energy-facts-you-should-know

27 years’ worth of worldwide energy consumption equals only one day’s worth of

solar energy hitting the earth

HOW WE CAPTURE THE SUNLIGHT IN AN EFFICIENT WAY?

The Elixir of Life

Aquaculture, Domestic, Industrial Irrigation, Livestock

Mining, Public supply, Thermoelectric power

FUTURE ENERGY SOURCE

Will Water Constrain Our Energy Future?

HYDROGEN ECONOMY?

SPECIFIC ENERGY DENSITY IS TOO HIGH COMPARED TO OTHER

RESOURCES

How can we prepare pure hydrogen?

The most discussed chemical compound in the 21st Century

CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas?

Can We Utilize Carbon Dioxide for a Better Future?

CARBON DIOXIDE ECONOMY

PHOTOCATALYSIS

@ 2014 Royal Society of ChemistryChem. Soc. Rev., 43, 7787

© 2001 Macmillan Publishers Limited

Michael Grätzel, Nature 414, 338-344

© 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 7372 – 7408

Conduction band, valence band potentials, and band gap energies of various semiconductor Photo-catalysts relative

to the redox potentials at pH 7 of compounds involved in CO2 reduction.

© 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 7372 – 7408