Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to welcome you to 8th SFSC in the innovative city Hangzhou, China. The SFSC is a highly standard biannual symposium rotationally launched and chaired by Prof. Can Li from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Licheng Sun from Dalian University of Technology (now at Westlake University, China) started from 2008. Utilization of limited fossil fuels as energy resources may cause not only energy crisis but also climate changes due to emission of green-house gas CO2. It is urgent in this century for mankind to mitigate energy infrastructures from traditional fossil fuels to renewable energies. Energy and environment problems have been emerged as the major challenging issues for the global sustainable development. The motivation of the SFSC is to continuously provide a highly standard academic forum for scholars to exchange and share their research experiences and ideas, present recent research advances, discuss scientific challenges, and identify the future research directions and needs in the development of efficient technologies for conversion of solar energy into solar fuels and solar electricity. We hope that the SFSC symposium will bring researchers in the corresponding fields from all regions of the world, and open up new avenues for research collaborations at both regional and global levels.