Solar Production of Fuels from Water and CO₂: Perspectives and Opportunities for a Sustainable Use of Renewable Energy

The increasing energy demand, the depletion of fossil fuels and the concern of maintaining clean environment have become the main reasons for a worldwide attention on renewable energy production. Fuel and energy productions from sunlight represent exciting challenges in the next future thank to the recent developments in related technologies, catalysts and materials. It will be discussed the present economic data concerning energy request, the current technological issues required to face an increase of the use of renewable energy, the main drawbacks related to low conversion efficiency in energy applications, the new routes for producing renewable hydrogen and the bio-mimicking approach provided by artificial leaves. Finally, the critical role of nano-scale engineered processes for the development of efficient and cost-effective systems will be evidenced. (authors)