Already, solar energy is used to convert sunlight directly (or indirectly) into electricity. Already, solar energy heats our homes, swimming pools and domestic water supply. We even know how to use the heat in solar energy to cool our homes. And currently in development is our ability to convert solar energy directly into fuel for planes, trains and automobiles.

Researchers at MIT have been working on ’solar fuels’ for a few years, but thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, a new solar fuel research hub will be established out west. $122 million will be handed out to a research team led by Caltech, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley and Stanford.

Their goal is to simulate “nature’s photosynthetic apparatus for practical energy production.” Hence, the research group’s name: The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP). The group will also make up the Fuels from Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub, one of three energy innovation hubs the DOE is putting into action this year. This one will work specifically on creating a “solar-energy-to-chemical-fuel conversion system,” and then make it commercially marketable.

Previously, the DOE announced an energy hub at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory aimed at modeling and simulating nuclear reactors. The third hub, to focus on energy-efficient buildings, will be announced at a later date.

The $112 million grant will be doled out over five years. The idea is to use solar energy combined with water and carbon dioxide to create clean fuels like methanol, ethanol or even gasoline, and do so through carbon reduction without the use of rare materials. They also want to respond to controversy over competition between ethanol production and food supply by producing “fuel from the sun 10 times more efficiently than current crops.”

While scientists today know a lot about how photosynthesis works in the natural world, little is yet known about how to mimic it in the laboratory, let alone produce fuel on a large scale. So real world application of solar fuel research is likely many years away. But the hope is that DOE-funded, concentrated, large-scale research into solar fuel processing will speed up the transition from unknown science to ready-to-go fuel pumps.

Sources: DOE, SFGate