Chemical challenges in energy technologies – A perspective from an under-35 chemist

The global energy and environmental context clearly highlights the need for new technologies capable of guaranteeing the conversion of renewable sources and the storage of the produced energy in a sustainable, safe and geographically balanced way. Chemical technologies are the basis of many of these strategies and international decision-makers, being aware of them, have begun to promote suitable funding initiatives. In this scenario, the main challenges that chemists need to consider at the academic research level are the following: - the use of sustainable, abundant and recyclable (or reusable) materials when fabricating energy devices at a large-scale; - the integration of energy conversion and storage devices, stopping working in separate communities; - the redesign of industrial chemistry processes in a sustainable way, targeting the low-impact production of solar fuels; - create medium-scale laboratories in universities to ensure a more credible scalability of the proposed technologies. In this plenary talk I will give an overview on the main trends in this field, with a special focus on what is studied at the Electrochemistry Group @PoliTO and on how it impacted on my career since 2013, when I joined MYCS conference for the first time as a PhD student.