A team of UD faculty members is establishing a new graduate program in sustainable energy from solar hydrogen, with the support of a $3.1 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.

Led by Christiana Honsberg, EG ’86, ’89M, ’92PhD, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, the solar hydrogen program involves 21 faculty members from four of the University’s seven colleges. In addition, three key partner organizations are the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the University of New South Wales and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The program will integrate relevant concepts from science, engineering, economics and social sciences, Honsberg says.

“Renewable energy is an inherently multidisciplinary topic, and unfortunately that is what has hampered its implementation,” she says. “An environmentally and economically sustainable solar hydrogen system requires integration of policy, economics, systems and components.”

Solar hydrogen—hydrogen generated from solar-derived power such as photovoltaics or biomass—is one approach to the critical global need for a sustainable energy system.

“It has attracted a great deal of interest because it uniquely addresses multiple aspects of the energy system,” Honsberg says. “For example, hydrogen can be used for transport, electricity or heat generation and energy storage.”

The integrating theme driving the development of the new graduate program is the question of what needs to be done to implement a sustainable hydrogen economy using solar energy.

“This question cannot be answered by improvements in a single component or single policy,” Honsberg says. “We have to provide our students with the multidisciplinary background needed to make the scientific and technical breakthroughs that will drive advances in energy conversion and storage. Just as important, we have to prepare them to provide the leadership that will ensure appropriate use of the technology.”

Ultimately, the program will fund about 10 doctoral students and six or seven undergraduates each year. Research will focus on four major areas: photovoltaics and photoelectrochemistry, fuel cells, hydrogen storage and policy and economics.

“Our goal is for our students to be ‘energy experts,’ with a research focus in one area but the background, knowledge and skills to draw from and interact with colleagues from multiple technical disciplines,” Honsberg says.