Vertical lines of solar panel elements on red soil, at Broken Hill solar plant in Australian outback

Solar panel elements at Broken Hill Solar Plant in New South Wales, Australia.Credit: zetter/Getty

The global energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February lends urgency to many nations’ plans to decarbonize, shifting from dependency on Russian fossil fuels to sustainable options. These transitions, which require considerable planning, infrastructure and collaboration, will be not easy.

Norway is a country to watch. A major oil and gas producer and exporter, the Scandinavian nation has agreed to ramp up gas supplies to the EU in an effort to stabilize supplies. At the same time, it is committed to reducing its own greenhouse-gas emissions by 90–95% from 1990 levels by 2050, excluding carbon sinks (natural or artificial reservoirs that absorb more carbon than they release). Norway’s extensive hydropower resources, which provide 92% of its electricity, will play a key role, as will strategies focused on energy technologies, such as electric vehicles, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage, according to a recent policy review by the International Energy Agency.

Countries that favour a diversified approach to generating energy are likely to fare better over the long term. And those with strong investments in sustainable energy research will have a head-start. In this supplement, we highlight examples of high-quality research related to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7, using our signature metric, Share, to track output in 82 natural-sciences journals.

Collaboration, not just between countries, but across sectors, is key to bringing energy technologies from the lab to the market and into homes and workplaces. It is also crucial that the needs of vulnerable and remote populations, which stand to benefit the most from cheaper and more sustainable energy technologies, are no longer overlooked in policy decision-making. As is discussed in our feature, energy policies that are developed with strong community involvement stand a greater chance of succeeding in an increasingly uncertain world.