Video

Converting sunlight into electricity holds a tremendous amount of promise for helping nations meet their energy needs and yet some big obstacles still stand in the way of adoption: cost, inefficiency of solar cells, and the shortage in supply of silicon materials for the making of photovoltaic cells, being the big ones.

In AAAS's latest Cutting Edge lecture series, Cutting Edge: Energy, AAAS Fellow Paul Alivisatos, director of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC-Berkeley professor of nanotechnology, looks at where solar energy is heading including efforts within the scientific community to help it achieve grid parity.

Related Links:

• Listen to/download Alivisatos's presentation
• Watch presentations on: Biofuel | Wave | Wind | Opening remarks by Dan Kammen
• View photos from Cutting Edge: Energy