The TSRC Summer School on Fundamental Science for Alternative Energy introduces principles, methods, and approaches relevant to the design of molecular transformations, energy transduction, and current applications for alternative energy. Energy and environment are likely to be key themes that will dominate the way science and engineering develop over the next few decades. Only an interdisciplinary approach can be expected to succeed in the face of problems of such difficulty hence the team-taught structure of the TSRC Summer School. We hope this course will inspire a new generation of scientists to continue work in the field, or at least to have something of an insider’s point of view as the field develops in the next few decades.