Physics and sustainability

Denise Völker, Head of Sustainability at DESY, shares how a dedicated sustainability office can lead the way in cutting the environmental impact of a big science facility.

Faced with the knowledge that her students would bear the brunt of the climate crisis, theoretical physicist Vandana Singh looked for ways to integrate climate education into her classroom. She advocates for a holistic approach that integrates science, transdisciplinarity, justice and action.

Physics has an undeniable environmental cost, which sits uncomfortably with the climate and sustainability concerns of many physicists. How can you respond?

Owing to the diminishing returns of deep learning and the focus on model accuracy, machine learning for chemistry might become an endeavour exclusive to well-funded institutions and industry. Extending the focus to model efficiency and interpretability will make machine learning for chemistry more inclusive and drive methodological progress.

Reducing resource usage will improve the environmental impact of high-performance computing — but doing so can clash with the science goals of funders. Computational physicist Peter Skands explains how he approached the conflict.

Data analysis relies heavily on computation, and algorithms have grown more demanding in terms of hardware and energy. Monitoring their environmental impacts is and will continue to be an essential part of sustainable research. Here, we provide guidance on how to do so accurately and with limited overheads.

Large-scale projects have become increasingly important in physics. They are also a source of greenhouse gas emissions. Clarisse Aujoux, Odile Blanchard and Kumiko Kotera describe how to use transparent, open data to estimate these emissions — the first step in taking effective action to reduce them.

Travelling by train rather than plane when possible is a key way to reduce the carbon footprint associated with conferences. Here are some things we’ve learned about how it works in practice.

How can physicists reap the benefits of conferences while reducing their environmental impact? New formats, such as online and multisite conferences, may be part of the solution.

Electronic waste, with printed circuit boards (PCBs) at its heart, is the fastest-growing category of hazardous solid waste in the world. New materials, in particular biobased materials, show great promise in solving some of the sustainability and toxicity problems associated with PCBs, although several challenges still prevent their practical application.

Keeping track of the rapidly improving solar cell performance is not as easy as it seems. Martin Green describes the Solar Cell Efficiency Tables that have been providing regular updates of the record solar cell performance since the 1990s.

Organic solar cells that are semitransparent in the visible and strongly absorbing in the near-infrared spectral regions present unique opportunities for applications in buildings and agriculture. This Review surveys recent progress in semitransparent organic photovoltaic devices and discusses strategies to optimize their efficiency, visible transparency, lifetime and scalability.

Defects have a key role in determining the functionality of solids and can make them powerful catalysts. This Review examines defect chemistry in metal oxides and discusses the role that charged defects and polarons have in enabling photoelectrochemical reactions.

Halide perovskites exhibit outstanding semiconductor properties and are a key component of a variety of devices, including solar cells and light-emitting diodes. This Review discusses electrical doping strategies for halide perovskites and takes a critical look at the challenges that need to be overcome to control the electronic properties of these semiconducting materials.

Inexpensive air quality monitors may open up pollution monitoring to the wider public. What can the physics of measurement science tell us about how devices need to perform, and how can standardization help?

Ignition of a millimetre-sized pellet containing a mix of deuterium–tritium, published in 2022, puts to rest questions about the capability of lasers to ignite thermonuclear fuel.

Increasing public and private investment, technological breakthroughs, and a growing number of facilities could bring fusion technology to the delivery era by mid-century. Matteo Barbarino argues that global cooperation and effective regulation are vital in accelerating progress.

Substantial progress has been made towards making fusion a source of commercial energy. One challenge is the damage that filamentary plasma eruptions cause to plasma-facing components. This Perspective summarizes what is understood about these eruptions and strategies for controlling them.

Predicting atmospheric ice formation from aerosol particles for cloud and climate modelling remains challenging. This Review summarizes recent fundamental advances on the governing parameters that lead to ice nucleation from liquid droplets and solid substrates, applying experiments and computational theory.

Although the differential equations that describe the physical climate system are deterministic, there are reasons, both theoretical and practical, why computational representations of these equations should be stochastic. This Perspective surveys the benefits of stochastic modelling of weather and climate.

Internal wave-driven mixing influences the physico-chemical properties of the ocean. This Review outlines the generation, propagation and dissipation of internal waves arising from tides, winds and geostrophic currents, and explores their climatic impacts.