“…Molecular catalysts, especially transition metal complexes (TMCs), play important roles as light sensitizers and catalytic redox centers in artificial photosynthesis that produces fuels from natural resources, e.g., water and CO 2 . ,− At the molecular level, these processes are initiated by fundamental light–matter interactions, converting photons to charges and providing driving forces for chemical transformations through energy dissipation pathways. X-ray transient spectroscopies, including X-ray transient absorption (XTA), X-ray transient emission (XTE), and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) as described in Section , are particularly suitable for capturing light induced chemical transformations during photocatalytic reactions involving TMCs to reveal the electronic structures of the metal centers, such as oxidation states, covalency, spin state, and orbital occupation, which are crucial for understanding the catalytic reaction mechanism and are difficult to obtain by other means.…”