The Challenges

How do we move away from dependence on foreign oil, toward environmental, economic, and energy security?

How can we develop a source of fuel that is also sustainable, carbon-neutral, and scalable?

What would it take to be market-ready within 10 years?

Can the United States mobilize and align a team of scientists and engineers from National Laboratories, academia, and industry to address such a formidable goal?

The LightSpeed Solutions hub is a team of leading scientists and researchers from top U.S. universities, national laboratories and international institutions that has come together in response to a Department of Energy funding opportunity announcement, "An Energy Innovation Hub - Fuels from Sunlight" (DE-FOA 000214), to be funded by Congress in the FY10 appropriations cycle.

LightSpeed Solutions combines forefront engineering and science capabilities, experienced management and leadership skills, and a focus on commercialization. Led by Arizona State University and Sandia National Laboratories, the hub proposes to achieve commercially deployed technology within 15 years: energy systems that use sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water to produce sustainable, scalable, and infrastructure-compatible liquid hydrocarbon fuels.

This is an extremely ambitious goal, one we believe that can - and must - be reached.

The LightSpeed Solutions hub will perform disciplined, focused and relentlessly outcomes-oriented research toward that end.

Changing our energy future is not optional; our team has the necessary and sufficient ingredients:
The right science. The right team. The right leadership. The right alignment.