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Historically redlined communities have been disproportionately burdened by multiple environmental and social stressors, related to lower housing values and inequitable access to investments and other resources. New research examines whether redlining was associated with the siting of fossil fuel power plants and how that association changed over time.
Historical appraisals of US neighbourhoods are thought to have led to present-day disparities in homeownership, home values and environmental and health outcomes. Cushing et al. examine the links between this historic red-lining, the siting of fossil fuel power plants and the burden of emissions.
There is a growing need for sustainable and green solvent processing of organic optoelectronics. Now Corzo et al. show that terpene solvents in a binary formulation enable device performance on par with that of more toxic solvents.
Low-carbon energy technology startups play a role in accelerating decarbonization and form part of several countries’ development strategies. This study characterizes the landscape of such startups in India, finding that market-creation policy should be complemented with long-term measures to strengthen technological capability.
Bifaciality allows the harvest of sunlight from both sides of a solar cell and thereby increases power output, but the efficiency of thin-film devices lags behind that of silicon counterparts. Now, researchers demonstrate a bifacial Cu(In,Ga)Se2-perovskite tandem solar cell with a 28 mW/cm2 power output under front and rear illumination.
The growing proportion of renewable energy increases the need to align consumer consumption behaviours with fluctuating energy supply. A new study pairs objective smart meter electricity data with subjective survey data to offer important insights into whether consumers are aware of their own electricity use patterns and thus whether they are prepared for an increasingly dynamic energy system.
Understanding the drivers of opposition to renewable energy infrastructure is increasingly important. Here the authors find an association between wind farm opposition and belief in conspiracy theories and test the effectiveness of information provision in countering it.
How well households understand their own energy usage patterns may impact the effectiveness of demand response initiatives. Zanocco et al. find that only half of a sample of California households were able to identify their own usage pattern from among four test patterns before COVID-19 restrictions.
Achieving high ionic conductivity at close to room temperature in solid oxide electrolytes is challenging due to the large thermal activation needed for ion transport. Now, a hydrogen-intercalated brownmillerite oxide, SrCoO2.5, has been shown to function as a high-performance proton conducting electrolyte for fuel cells below 200°C.
Solid oxide ionic conductors typically require elevated temperature to activate ionic transport. Here the authors report unusually high proton conductivity close to room temperature in a hydrogenated oxide, HSrCoO2.5, which they attribute to the intrinsically ordered oxygen vacancy channels and high proton concentration.
Bifacial Cu(In,Ga)Se2 photovoltaics have limited efficiency. Now Yang et al. have developed a process for low-temperature deposition of the absorber material that suppresses the formation of a detrimental GaOx interlayer and reduces the back interface recombination, enabling efficiencies of over 19% and 10% under front and rear illumination, respectively.
One of the biggest hurdles to realise high-performance Li-metal batteries is the instability of Li metal towards all relevant electrolytes. Now, an approach is reported to improve Li cells’ stability by upshifting the Li electrodes’ potential to reduce their voltage gap with the electrolyte electrochemical stability windows.
It is challenging to develop battery cathodes with both high performance and low cost. Now, an amorphous material based on cheap, earth-abundant elements is shown to achieve high capacity by undertaking both the intercalation and conversion reactions reversibly.
A phase heterojunction (PHJ) solar cell is formed by interfacing two phases of the perovskite CsPbI3 — each of which exhibits different opto-electronic properties. Devices based on PHJs reach a maximum power conversion efficiency of 20.17%, surpassing the 15% achieved by devices based on either of the single phases alone.
Real-time tracking of the dynamic chemistry in commercial batteries by infrared fibre spectroscopy provides insight into the parasitic reactions that occur at the electrodes and in the electrolyte. This chemical-sensing method enables identification of chemical species and observation of Na(Li) inventory changes upon cycling, providing essential information for improving battery technology.
Organic solar cells with a bulk-heterojunction architecture suffer from photocurrent loss driven by triplet states. Now, Jiang et al. show that sequentially deposited donor–acceptor planar–mixed heterojunctions suppress triplet formation, enabling efficiencies over 19%.
