Sustainable practices: Solar hydrogen fuel and education program on sustainable energy systems

Owing to the increasingly apparent climate change, it becomes imperative to use renewable energy in the production of fuel that is environmentally friendly. At the same time, there is a need to introduce the related education programs to develop the skills of the technical staff working at the front line of rapidly developing renewable energy technologies. Hydrogen is expected to be the fuel in the near future. At present hydrogen fuel is mainly produced using steam reforming of methane (SRM). However, hydrogen generation using the SRM results in emission of greenhouse gases and climate change. Therefore, there is a common consensus that the SRM technology will soon be challenged by the technologies of solar hydrogen generation using photoelectrochemical cells (PEC). However, the PEC technology will be the ultimate winner only if the effects related to climate change and pollution are fully monetised. While such radical development is difficult for implementation due to economic reasons, the increasingly urgent need to reduce climate change dictates the need to increase competitiveness of the PEC method. This imposes the need to increase the efficiency of the solar energy conversion and reduce the costs of the related raw materials and devices. The development of renewable energy-related technologies, such as those related to solar hydrogen, imposes the need to introduce education programs in order to train technical and research staff working at the front line of rapidly developing sustainable energy systems. The present work considers such programs addressing a range of energy-related topics, such as hydrogen energy, electrochemical energy, photoelectrochemical energy and alternative renewable energy as well as industrial ecology and energy policy. It is concluded that implementation of these programs is urgently needed in order to protect the environment through sustainable development. •Fossil fuels must be replaced with solar hydrogen in the matter of urgency.•The development of high-performance solar energy conversion devices requires a new generation of materials.•There is an urgent need to introduce new education programs on sustainable energy technologies.