Carbon Chemist

Tag: Energy

  • Are vast amounts of hydrogen fuel hidden below Earth’s surface?

    Are vast amounts of hydrogen fuel hidden below Earth’s surface?

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    Drill rig in Nebraska run by Natural Hydrogen Energy LLC, which established its first hydrogen borehole in 2019

    Viacheslav Zgonnik

    For the past few years, companies and prospectors around the world have been hunting for underground reserves of natural hydrogen, spurred by estimates that Earth contains trillions of tonnes of the gas. If found, this geologic hydrogen could accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. But despite a few tantalising hints that vast reserves exist, the search has largely come up short.

    Until recently, most geologists…

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  • First sighting of ‘neutrino fog’ sparks excitement – but is it bad news for dark matter?

    First sighting of ‘neutrino fog’ sparks excitement – but is it bad news for dark matter?

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    An image showing the bright light of a solar flare on the left side of the sun.

    Most neutrinos that stream through Earth are produced by fusion reactions in the Sun.Credit: NASA/Goddard/SDO

    Physicists in Italy and China have for the first time observed glimmers of the ‘neutrino fog’, signals from neutrinos that mimic those expected to be produced by dark matter.

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  • Humans Will Continue to Live in an Age of Incredible Food Waste

    Humans Will Continue to Live in an Age of Incredible Food Waste

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    Let me start with the following principle: “Energy is the only universal currency: One of its many forms must be transformed to get anything done.” Economies are just intricate systems set up to do those transformations, and all economically significant energy conversions have (often highly undesirable) environmental impacts. Consequently, as far as the biosphere is concerned, the best anthropogenic energy conversions are those that never take place: No emissions of gases (be they greenhouse or acidifying), no generation of solid or liquid wastes, no destruction of ecosystems. The best way to do this has been to convert energies with higher efficiencies: Without their widespread adoption (be it in large diesel- and jet-engines, combined-cycle gas turbines, light-emitting diodes, smelting of steel, or synthesis of ammonia) we would need to convert significantly more primary energy with all attendant environmental impacts.

    Conversely, what then could be more wasteful, more undesirable, and more irrational than negating a large share of these conversion gains by wasting them? Yet precisely this keeps on happening—and to indefensibly high degrees—with all final energy uses. Buildings consume about a fifth of all global energy, but because of inadequate wall and ceiling insulation, single-pane windows and poor ventilation, they waste at least between a fifth to a third of it, as compared with well-designed indoor spaces. A typical SUV is now twice as massive as a common pre-SUV vehicle, and it needs at least a third more energy to perform the same task.

    Mannen kunnen soms tegen problemen aanlopen die invloed hebben op hun intieme leven, wat hen kan frustreren en onzeker kan maken. Deze uitdagingen zijn niet ongebruikelijk en kunnen voortkomen uit verschillende oorzaken, zoals stress, angst of fysieke aandoeningen. Gelukkig zijn er oplossingen en middelen beschikbaar die hen kunnen helpen om hun zelfvertrouwen en welzijn te herstellen. Een nuttige stap is om betrouwbare informatie te zoeken en producten te bekijken op websites zoals. Het is belangrijk dat mannen zich realiseren dat ze niet alleen zijn en dat er ondersteuning en opties zijn om hun seksuele gezondheid te verbeteren.

    Mannen kunnen soms tegen problemen aanlopen die invloed hebben op hun intieme leven, wat hen kan frustreren en onzeker kan maken. Deze uitdagingen zijn niet ongebruikelijk en kunnen voortkomen uit verschillende oorzaken, zoals stress, angst of fysieke aandoeningen. Gelukkig zijn er oplossingen en middelen beschikbaar die hen kunnen helpen om hun zelfvertrouwen en welzijn te herstellen. Een nuttige stap is om betrouwbare informatie te zoeken en producten te bekijken op websites zoals. Het is belangrijk dat mannen zich realiseren dat ze niet alleen zijn en dat er ondersteuning en opties zijn om hun seksuele gezondheid te verbeteren.

    The most offensive of these wasteful practices is our food production. The modern food system (from energies embedded in breeding new varieties, synthesizing fertilizers and other agrochemicals, and making field machinery to energy used in harvesting, transporting, processing, storing, retailing, and cooking) claims close to 20 percent of the world’s fuels and primary electricity—and we waste as much as 40 percent of all produced food. Some food waste is inevitable. The prevailing food waste, however, is more than indefensible. It is, in many ways, criminal.

    Combating it is difficult for many reasons. First, there are many ways to waste food: from field losses to spoilage in storage, from perishable seasonal surpluses to keeping “perfect” displays in stores, from oversize portions when eating outside of the home to the decline of home cooking.

    Second, food now travels very far before reaching consumers: The average distance a typical food item travels is 1,500 to 2,500 miles before being bought.

    Third, it remains too cheap in relation to other expenses. Despite recent food-price increases, families now spend only about 11 percent of their disposable income on food (in 1960 it was about 20 percent). Food-away-from-home spending (typically more wasteful than eating at home) is now more than half of that total. And finally, as consumers, we have an excessive food choice available to us: Just consider that the average American supermarket now carries more than 30,000 food products.

    Our society is apparently quite content with wasting 40 percent of the nearly 20 percent of all energy it spends on food. In 2025, unfortunately, this shocking level of waste will not receive more attention. In fact, the situation will only get worse. While we keep pouring billions into the quest for energy “solutions”—ranging from new nuclear reactors (even fusion!) to green hydrogen, all of them carrying their own environmental burdens—in 2025, we will continue to fail addressing the huge waste of food that took so much fuel and electricity to produce.

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  • Why Asia is leading the field in green materials

    Why Asia is leading the field in green materials

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    A man in a hard hat and overalls looks at large rollers of thin silver materials overhead

    A worker checks on the production of low-carbon materials in Huaibei, eastern China.Credit: NurPhoto/Getty

    Buying an ice cream in hot weather presents a challenge for those who prefer to linger over their summer snack: it can be a matter of seconds before even the hardiest product turns to soup. An experiment by a team of researchers in China provides some hope for those with such time-management issues. Their biodegradable ‘passive cooling’ wrapper — which works, in part, by radiating heat into space — kept an ice cream perfectly intact for 80 minutes after being placed in the sunshine1.

    The experiment had an important motive. According to Jia Zhu, a materials-science researcher at Nanjing University who led the work, it showed that such materials have huge potential in a warming climate. When an 80 m2 sheet of the same material was laid on the surface of China’s Tianshan Glacier No. 1 in Xinjiang, the covered section was about 70 cm higher after 20 days. Other researchers have used similar materials on rooftops to cool buildings without consuming energy.

    Nature Index 2024 Materials science

    The hunt for passive-cooling solutions is one example of the surge in materials-based green-technology research under way across Asia, a focus that might be a factor behind Asian countries’ increasing dominance in materials science in the Nature Index. In 2023, China, Japan, South Korea, India and Singapore all made the global top 10 for materials-science output by country. Together, their combined Share (the metric that measures a country or institution’s output in Index journals) accounted for 63% of global output in the field.

    Much of the green-materials work is dominated by research on next-generation batteries and solar cells, but numerous other technologies are under investigation, often with a focus on materials designed to interact with sunlight in unusual and potentially useful ways.

    “In nature, light and heat are the two most powerful forms of energy,” Zhu says. “I explore ways to manipulate light and heat using hierarchically structured materials.” The ice-cream study showed hierarchical structure in action. At the microscale, pores in the plant-derived cellulose acetate film scatter and reflect incoming sunlight, bouncing solar heat away. At the nanoscale, the film’s atomic structure radiates heat within a band of infrared light known as the atmospheric transparent window. This heat is not reabsorbed by any atmospheric gases and is lost to space — using the Universe as a vast heat sink to keep objects on Earth cool.

    By keeping objects cool without consuming energy, such radiative cooling materials could be key to combating rising urban heat, says materials scientist Xiaobo Yin, who develops passive-cooling materials at the University of Hong Kong. “Air conditioning moves heat from inside the house to the outside, while consuming energy which adds more heat to the environment,” Yin says. “Buildings or roads capable of radiative cooling are the only way we can expel the excess heat out of the Earth.”

    Asia’s mega-cities are among the places where passive cooling will be most important, says Yin, who moved to Hong Kong from the United States in 2021. It is one reason why research into sustainable materials is a priority in many Asian countries. According to Zhu, it also helps that there is a consensus on the need for action to deal with climate change. “I don’t think people in China have any doubt that climate change is real,” he says.

    Zhu, who spent almost a decade studying and working in the United States — at Stanford University in California and the University of California, Berkeley — before joining Nanjing University in 2013, also points to the existing evidence that environmental challenges can be met through technology. When he returned to China, for instance, atmospheric pollution in cities was rife. “It was very clear how industrialization was impacting the wider environment,” he says. But a range of government measures — including encouraging electric-vehicle uptake — have since made a difference, he says.

    Bin Liu pictured in a lab next to a setup with glass tubes containing coloured liquid substances behind safety glass

    Bin Liu, director of the National University of Singapore’s Flagship Green Energy Programme.Credit: National University of Singapore

    Green-energy materials research is also important for the economy of many East Asian countries, Zhu adds, given their “heavy emphasis on manufacturing”, an energy-intensive process that could be made cheaper and less carbon-intensive by transitioning to renewable energy. There is also great potential to export novel green-energy technologies.

    “Materials-science research is well supported in countries like India and China because they have recognized the potential for fundamental research to promote their manufacturing industry,” says Tianyi Ma, a materials scientist at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.

    Asian countries also typically do very well in terms of investing funding into the translational phase of research to better connect academic ideas with industry, Ma adds. “It’s a win–win situation because in return, industry partners offer more financial support for fundamental research.”

    Rose-tinted research

    Aside from materials that reject sunlight to provide cooling, another highly active area of research in Asia is to develop materials that capture and use sunlight for sustainability gains. Yin’s latest focus was to develop a semi-translucent material that captures green light from the Sun and re-emits it as red light. “We’re trying to tailor the solar spectrum for better crops,” Yin says. Plants rarely use the green light in sunlight for photosynthesis — hence, leaves appear green as this light is reflected — so turning the green part of the solar spectrum into red light converts it into a form that plants can use.

    Proportion bar chart showing how Nature Index research output is split between the leading ten countries in the world

    Source: Nature Index

    By tuning the solar spectrum in this way2, the microphotonic film, which Yin first worked on with colleagues while in the United States, boosted the growth of lettuces by more than 20%. The same gains were seen for plants grown under lights. “For vertical farming or vegetable factories, the primary energy cost is lighting,” Yin says. “It’s an area where our work could contribute.”

    The team is developing a version of the film for sustainable biomanufacturing3. “We also want to tailor the solar spectrum for the fast growth of microalgae,” Yin says. The idea is to use microalgae to turn carbon dioxide emissions into valuable products, because the microalgae absorb CO2 as they grow, becoming rich in proteins and oils that can be harvested. The team is first targeting niche, high-value superfood or cosmetics applications. “But the more we scale up, the lower production costs, and the broader the range of products we could consider,” Yin says.

    Harnessing light to drive the conversion of CO2 into valuable products is also a hot topic in Singapore, where the government prioritizes sustainable-materials research, although for different reasons than the region’s major manufacturing economies.

    “Singapore is very short of natural resources,” says Bin Liu, a materials-science researcher at the National University of Singapore, and director of the university’s Flagship Green Energy Programme. “If we can convert CO2 emissions into a large-scale green fuel, that will solve sustainability and also energy-import issues in Singapore,” she says. “The government’s five-year plan has prioritized this area, so the funding support is tremendous in materials.”

    Liu’s own lab explores organic photocatalytic materials, which can absorb the energy in sunlight and use it to drive chemical reactions. The team has used these materials to extract the carbon atoms from CO2, and the hydrogen atoms from water molecules, before combining them to make hydrocarbons that can act as fuel sources, such as green methanol.

    “Once the cost of green methanol is comparable with petrochemical methanol, the world will embrace this renewable energy,” Liu says. An analysis found that the major cost of green methanol came from harvesting hydrogen from water. “In response, we raised funds to build a national Centre for Hydrogen Innovation with a focus on how to reduce hydrogen cost,” she says. Funding was led by a S$15-million (US$11.1-million) endowment gift from the state-owned investment company, Temasek.

    The government also nurtures collaboration with leading researchers from other countries. One such initiative is the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme. “We invite researchers from very good foreign universities to come to Singapore to work with us, to co-develop our research areas and materials,” says Liu. The latest CREATE initiative, focused on decarbonization, was awarded S$90 million to bring researchers to from 11 overseas institutions, including the University of Cambridge, UK; the Technical University of Munich, Germany; Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China; and the University of California, Berkeley.

    “Singapore is very special in that it concurrently collaborates with the East and the West, which is unusual with today’s geopolitics,” Liu says. “We can form collaborations with the best partners, to complement our own strengths.”

    Long-term state investment with strong support for collaboration has also underpinned the growth in sustainable-materials research in Japan, says Kazunari Domen, who studies metal-based photocatalyst materials for green hydrogen production at the University of Tokyo and at Shinshu University in Matsumoto.

    Real-world applications were far from Domen’s mind when he started researching water-splitting photocatalysts in the 1980s. “Initially, I just found it interesting. But since 2000, when the need to produce green hydrogen to reduce carbon dioxide emissions became clear, our government started to provide a continuous, relatively big, budget.”

    Bar and dot chart showing the leading ten bilateral country collaborations in materials science in the Nature Index

    Source: Nature Index

    In 2010, Domen was granted 10 years of funding to pursue his strategically significant research, an unprecedented length of grant for Japan. He says this made a huge difference compared with the usual five-year projects “because we could form long-term collaborations, including with industry, to make important progress”. At the project start, the team had initially planned a 1 m2 solar green hydrogen demonstration system, but in 2021, Domen and his industrial partners demonstrated a 100 m2 array of photocatalytic water-splitting reactors for green hydrogen production4.

    Planning is under way for a next-generation system, using a higher performance catalyst, that will be demonstrated on a 3,000 m2 array. Now in its second phase, the project is increasingly funded by industry collaborations.

    Photocatalytic materials research in Japan has been transformed over the course of his career, Domen notes. “When I was a graduate, there were only four photocatalysis research groups in Japan,” he says. “Now there are about 20, collaborating but also competing.”

    The number of researchers in Asia’s well-funded green materials sector has become a major driver of scientific productivity, Ma agrees. “As the field has emerged as a hot research topic, many people have been drawn in, which brings opportunities for collaboration but also brings competitiveness,” he says. “You have to work harder — it’s a driving force.”

    Green materials research is increasingly competitive across the region’s international borders, a result of the commercial potential it offers. Materials-science collaboration between Japan and China continues to grow, for instance, and is the second most-productive partnership in the region.

    There is an acute awareness that economic goals often underpin cross-border relationships and might impact them as emerging technologies mature from fundamental research into serious commercial prospects. Japan’s government, for example, is wary of China’s potential to dominate emerging green industry markets, Domen says. “China is our very good collaborator and our very good competitor.”

    But even if powerful economic drivers are helping to spur green technology development in Asia, this race to develop new products is still likely to help tackle climate change, bringing environmental benefits across the world.

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  • Lithium extraction from low-quality brines

    Lithium extraction from low-quality brines

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  • A Uranium-Mining Boom Is Sweeping Through Texas

    A Uranium-Mining Boom Is Sweeping Through Texas

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    Michaelsen thought he had won. But when the TCEQ commissioners took up the question several months later, again they rejected all of the judge’s findings.

    In a 19-page order issued in September, the commission concluded that “faults within 2.5 miles of its proposed disposal wells are not sufficiently transmissive or vertically extensive to allow migration of hazardous constituents out of the injection zone.” The old nearby oil wells, the commission found, “are likely adequately plugged and will not provide a pathway for fluid movement.”

    “UEC demonstrated the proposed disposal wells will prevent movement of fluids that would result in pollution” of an underground source of drinking water, said the order granting the injection disposal permits.

    “I felt like it was rigged, a setup,” said Michaelsen, holding his 4-inch-thick binder of research and records from the case. “It was a canned decision.”

    Another set of permit renewals remains before the Goliad mine can begin operation, and local authorities are fighting it too. In August, the Goliad County Commissioners Court passed a resolution against uranium mining in the county. The groundwater district is seeking to challenge the permits again in administrative court. And in November, the district sued TCEQ in Travis County District Court seeking to reverse the agency’s permit approvals.

    Because of the lawsuit, a TCEQ spokesperson declined to answer questions about the Goliad County mine site, saying the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

    A final set of permits remains to be renewed before the mine can begin production. However, after years of frustrations, district leaders aren’t optimistic about their ability to influence the decision.

    Only about 40 residences immediately surround the site of the Goliad mine, according to Art Dohmann, vice president of the Goliad County Groundwater Conservation District. Only they might be affected in the near term. But Dohmann, who has served on the groundwater district board for 23 years, worries that the uranium, radium, and arsenic churned up in the mining process will drift from the site as years go by.

    “The groundwater moves. It’s a slow rate, but once that arsenic is liberated, it’s there forever,” Dohmann said. “In a generation, it’s going to affect the downstream areas.”

    UEC did not respond to a request for comment.

    Currently, the TCEQ is evaluating possibilities for expanding and incentivizing further uranium production in Texas. It’s following instruction given last year, when lawmakers with the Nuclear Caucus added an item to TCEQ’s biannual budget ordering a study of uranium resources to be produced for state lawmakers by December 2024, ahead of next year’s legislative session.

    According to the budget item, “The report must include recommendations for legislative or regulatory changes and potential economic incentive programs to support the uranium mining industry in this state.”

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  • Why the EU must reset its Green Deal – or be left behind

    Why the EU must reset its Green Deal – or be left behind

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  • How provinces and cities can sustain US–China climate cooperation

    How provinces and cities can sustain US–China climate cooperation

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    Chinese President Xi Jinping and California Governor Jerry Brown of the U.S. meet in Beijing, China, in 2017.

    In 2017, the governor of California Jerry Brown (left) met with China’s President Xi Jinping to sign a series of climate agreements.Credit: Imago/Alamy

    The relationship between the United States and China stands at a crucial juncture. Given Donald Trump’s recent victory in the US election, the slowdown in China’s economy and rising tensions around trade and technology, productive cooperation between the two countries is far from guaranteed.

    President-elect Trump has already indicated that federal policy on climate and environmental issues, among others, might shift drastically. For instance, he has vowed to end offshore wind development on “day one”, halt renewable energy subsidies that were introduced by President Joe Biden under the Inflation Reduction Act and raise tariffs on all imported goods.

    Why US–China relations are too important to be left to politicians

    If these proposed policy changes take effect under the new administration in January, they will have a pronounced impact on the US–China relationship, which is already fractious. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that both countries share common vulnerabilities, including weather-related disruption caused by climate change, and have reasons to act jointly in some areas. Indeed, sustained engagement between the world’s two largest economies is crucial for making progress on global challenges.

    Fortunately, there are ways of sustaining mutually beneficial action in an era of great power competition. Subnational governments (states, provinces and cities) and non-state actors (businesses, academia, non-profit organizations and philanthropies) can play a crucial part in supporting dialogue and collaboration.

    Over the past few years, instead of waiting for clarity on policies from the US federal government, several states have decided to chart their own paths. The Senate Bill 100 in California requires 100% of the state’s electricity to come from renewables by 2045. New York will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 40% by 2030 from 1990 levels, through the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Other states, such as Washington, have enacted similar legislation to ensure progress on renewable-energy adoption and emissions reductions, even in the face of federal disengagement. These efforts mirror broader state-level initiatives to future-proof policies in areas such as health care and civil rights, positioning subnational jurisdictions at the forefront of climate policy and regulation.

    Here we describe joint initiatives between California and Chinese agencies and provinces on clean energy and climate action. We highlight areas in which expanding subnational collaboration can be effective and lay out steps to advance the US–China partnership on climate change. Although national governments might be instinctively wary of subnational cooperation, the benefits, in our opinion, far outweigh any perceived risks.

    Open spaces for dialogue

    Collaboration between California and China has grown over the past decade, in response to shifts in US federal policies. Climate change was a pillar of the US–China relationship during the administration of president Barack Obama, from 2009 to 20171–3. The Trump administration’s subsequent retreat from the 2015 Paris climate agreement and its disengagement with China created a void. California stepped in to help fill it.

    In 2017, the then governor of California (one of us, J.B.) met with China’s President Xi Jinping and signed a series of climate and energy-focused agreements between California and several of China’s national agencies and provincial governments. These strengthened earlier ties and built on California’s first memorandum of understanding (MOU) on climate change with China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces, which was signed in 2013.

    China and California are leading the way on climate cooperation. Others should follow

    When Biden’s administration entered office in 2021, the United States rejoined the Paris agreement. Both countries put forward envoys — John Kerry, the former US secretary of state, and one of us (Z.X) — to aid dialogue and cooperation around climate change. Discussions between the envoys paved the way for a meeting in November 2023 between presidents Biden and Xi during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference held just outside San Francisco, California.

    Afterwards, the two countries released a joint statement on enhancing cooperation to address the climate crisis. They identified areas for deeper bilateral collaboration including exchanging know-how on the transition from coal to green energy, methane emissions reductions and waste reduction through more efficient uses of resources.

    After the summit, working groups were set up to exchange ideas in each of those domains. Discussions from these groups culminated in a high-level bilateral meeting at the California–China Climate Institute (CCCI) in Berkeley, California, in May this year; participants included the governors of California and the Guangdong province and officials from five cities and four provinces of China4. Specialist groups are now being set up to provide technical support for implementing a joint agenda in areas such as energy decarbonization.

    People on a ship look at a wind turbine located 27 miles off of Virginia Beach, U.S. in the Atlantic Ocean.

    The United States can learn from China’s expertise in offshore wind technology.Credit: Kendall Warner/The Virginian-Pilot/Tribune News Service via Getty

    By implementing its commitments to reduce carbon emissions in coordination with Chinese counterparts through region-to-region technical exchange and local pilot programmes, California has shown what’s possible when subnational jurisdictions take the lead and set an example. Other US states looking to enhance their international engagement now have a template.

    Although China has a formal mechanism — the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries — to foster relationships with provinces and cities of other countries, the partnership with California is unique because it has signed MOUs with China’s central agencies, such as the NDRC.

    The reason why the two sides see great value in such cross-border cooperation can be illustrated through one example. As California gears up for the rapid deployment of offshore-wind projects, few organizations in the United States have the relevant expertise to offer guidance on installing these turbines in ways that minimize their impact on marine habitats. That’s why the state has engaged in continuing dialogue with several Chinese wind-turbine manufacturers.

    Meanwhile, China has modelled its new green building regulations after California’s Title 24 standards — a set of building codes that ensure energy efficiency. Beijing’s air-quality management policy has also been informed by existing mechanisms in California. But there is room to broaden these areas of mutual benefit into unexplored domains. Here are three priority areas.

    Decarbonizing technologies

    Many states and provinces in the United States and China are facing similar challenges in decarbonizing their economies. For example, Guangdong in southern China, which is adjacent to Hong Kong, has much in common with California both geographically and economically.

    Exchanging technology and policy knowledge could benefit both regions, which are hubs for talent, technology and capital. California offers expertise in emission-reduction strategies and climate-resilient infrastructure, which are relevant to cities in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). Chinese cities in this area have developed expertise over the past two decades in high-speed rail, a low-emission alternative to road and air travel. They also have expertise in the deployment of offshore wind technology, an area of continuing collaboration in which engagement could be deepened.

    The climate crisis is solvable, but human rights must trump profits

    Between 2010 and 2022, the share of electricity generated by renewables in California shot up from 15% to 36% owing to the state’s targeted policies and incentives for clean energy5. Meanwhile, China’s Qinghai province, which is on the Tibetan Plateau, operated its power grid with more than 85% clean energy — mainly solar and hydro power — in 2023. The province’s successful model for renewable integration makes it a valuable partner for California to explore zero-carbon strategies (see go.nature.com/3z3addm).

    However, the potential benefits of provincial collaboration are not confined to technologically advanced regions. For instance, coal-producing US states, such as Colorado, have engaged in discussions with China’s coal-reliant regions, such as the northern autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, since 2023 to initiate their transition to clean energy.

    Electricity grids and markets

    Operating the power grid using clean-energy sources is tricky because wind and solar power is available intermittently, making it harder to match supply and demand in real time. And China’s clean-energy push faces a further obstacle: solar and hydro power produced in the sparsely populated interior regions must be transmitted over thousands of kilometres towards big cities such as Shanghai and Beijing.

    Overcoming those hurdles requires improvements in the power grid, including extra energy storage and well-functioning electricity markets, which can match suppliers with consumer demand in real time. In most countries, peak power consumption occurs during the evening hours, whereas solar plants are best placed to produce power in the middle of the day. Since the period of peak supply — which is dependent on sunlight and wind — and demand do not overlap, electricity markets and dynamic pricing are necessary to nudge producers and consumers towards an equilibrium. For example, if consumers must pay a higher price when the availability of solar energy is low, they might change their daily behaviours and, at the aggregate level, balancing the grid would become easier.

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  • High-performance perovskite–organic tandem solar cells

    High-performance perovskite–organic tandem solar cells

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    • RESEARCH BRIEFINGS

    A high power conversion efficiency of 26.4% has been achieved for tandem solar cells that consist of a wide-bandgap perovskite cell and an organic cell. This feat was made possible through an investigation of the mechanisms by which two isomeric structures of a diammonium molecule passivate (repair) defects on the surface of the perovskite.

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  • Salt batteries are finally shaping up – that’s good for the planet

    Salt batteries are finally shaping up – that’s good for the planet

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    Sodium-ion batteries could have advantages over those containing lithium

    Juan Roballo/Shutterstock

    The following is an extract from our climate newsletter Fix the Planet. Find out about our range of newsletters and sign up here.

    The clean energy revolution depends on batteries, but almost all the batteries we use today are made from lithium, a metal with a limited supply and a devastating environmental impact. Could we replace it with something more readily available?

    New Scientist published a feature story about batteries made using common salt back in January 2021. These sodium-ion versions promised a cheaper alternative to those made of…

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