CAMBRIDGE, MA, and BOULDER, CO — The links between “green” energy and water recently have become topics of scientific research and public commentary, and in one new research paper, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) says that “a highly manufacturable and inexpensive method for personalized solar energy storage has been discovered” that would involve water as a raw ingredient.

In a paper published in September by the American Chemical Society (ACS), entitled “Chemistry of Personalized Solar Energy,” Daniel G. Nocera, Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry at MIT, says that the average American home’s daily energy needs of 20 kilowatt-hours could be stored by the use of solar energy in a catalytic splitting of the water molecules found in as little as 5.5 liters (5.8 quarts) of water.

Nocera’s paper is among more than 250 research advances on a year-end list of “standouts” chosen by the ACS. They were chosen from among some 34,000 scientific reports this year in the society’s 34 peer-reviewed journals. The solar energy paper was published in the September 23 issue of the ACS journal Inorganic Chemistry.

“He has discovered a solar fuel process that captures many of the elements of photosynthesis outside the leaf,” the ACS commented on Nocera’s findings. Storage of solar energy has been a key issue due to the fact that the energy itself can be generated only during daylight hours. The new storage process would provide a secure, carbon-neutral and plentiful supply of point-of-use energy, according to Nocera.

Looking at a different kind of energy-water relationship, a solar energy company executive commented recently in an article published in the Boulder (CO) Daily Camera newspaper that “whenever we talk about the carbon footprint of energy, we really should be talking about its water footprint as well.”

Tom Rooney, CEO of SPG Solar Co., a solar energy system design-installation company based in Novato, CA, wrote in the article that large-scale energy production with coal, oil, nuclear or even large-scale solar requires large quantities of water, much of it for cooling. He wrote that 49 percent of California water withdrawals are used to produce energy, adding that according to one estimate, it takes 8 to 16 gallons of water to burn one 60-watt light bulb for 12 hours. “That’s a lot of water for a little bit of light.”

Rooney continued, “So we use water to create energy, and we use energy to create water — to create more energy to create more water. And on and on and on it goes in a downward spiral that completely distorts the way we think and act about water and power.”

He says that smaller point-of-use solar panel arrays on roofs, in backyards, on schools, on farms and on office buildings create electricity without the heat. “Except for a few spritzes to wash [the solar panels] off, they do not need water.”

To read the full Inorganic Chemistry article, click here.

To read the full Boulder Daily Camera article, click here.

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