A recent­ly pub­lished report, Basic Research Needs: Catal­y­sis for Ener­gy, iden­ti­fies research oppor­tu­ni­ties for catal­y­sis to help meet the nation’s ener­gy needs, assess­es the cur­rent state of catal­y­sis sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, and rec­om­mends fun­da­men­tal research direc­tions to meet the goals described in the report. The report is based on a work­shop held in August, 2007, co-chaired by Alex­is Bell of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley, Bruce Gates of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis, and Dou­glas Ray of the Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry.

The report con­clud­ed that, on the basis of cur­rent trends, the Unit­ed States must seri­ous­ly reassess its ener­gy future. The urgent need for fuels in an era of declin­ing resources and press­ing envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns demands a resur­gence in catal­y­sis sci­ence, requir­ing a mas­sive com­mit­ment of pro­gram­mat­ic lead­er­ship and improved exper­i­men­tal and the­o­ret­i­cal meth­ods to make it pos­si­ble to fol­low, in real time, cat­alyt­ic reac­tions on an atom­ic scale on sur­faces that are nonuni­form and laden with large mol­e­cules under­go­ing com­plex com­pet­ing process­es. Ulti­mate­ly, a goal should be devel­op­ment of sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies for con­vert­ing car­bon diox­ide and water into fuel feed­stocks. Until that future state is reached, new under­stand­ing of more tra­di­tion­al cat­a­lyst form and func­tion can ease the way to a more sus­tain­able ener­gy future.

Details are avail­able in the full 222-page report, which is acces­si­ble on line at www​.sc​.doe​.gov/​b​e​s​/​r​e​p​o​r​t​s​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​C​A​T​_​r​p​t​.​pdf.