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Seaweed farming is gaining attention as a potential climate change mitigation solution, but how to achieve such potential is uncertain given current knowledge and practice. A study now explores how expanding seaweed farming for wider human use could reduce carbon emissions from agriculture.
Regulating the temperature inside buildings takes a huge amount of energy, but this cost can be reduced with a smart, durable building envelope that can adapt to different temperatures for heat loss control.
An aqueous electrochromic device has been developed that enables reversible tuning of its thermal emissivity with minimal electrical power input. The device allows for all-season radiative thermoregulation, leading towards year-round energy savings for buildings.
Electrochromism provides a means to control transmittance of light for increased energy efficiency of buildings. Here the aqueous electrochromic design features tunable emissivity and allows for all-season radiative thermoregulation.
The washing processes of synthetic textiles have become one of the main sources of microplastic pollution in the oceans. Here the authors show the rational design of polydimethylsiloxane-coated nylon that releases substantially less microplastic fibres in both dry and wet conditions.
Diversified renewable energy sources can enable the sustainable operation of multisector resource systems. An artificial intelligence-assisted multi-objective design framework, applied in Ghana, explores optimized management and investment strategies balancing hydropower, bioenergy, solar and wind energies, and their impacts.
Philosophers in the Western tradition of virtue ethics have long considered practical wisdom a central virtue. This Perspective suggests that virtue ethics and practical wisdom can enrich the work of sustainability researchers, helping them to navigate the challenges of co-producing knowledge and effecting transformative change.
Seaweed farming could reduce agriculture’s environmental footprint, but its potential is not well-explored yet. This study shows how globally extended aquaculture can reduce terrestrial crops demand and greenhouse gas emissions while providing a substitute or supplement for food, animal feeds and fuel.
The global economy delivers benefits but affects the environment. A study finds that over the period 1995–2019 the environmental pressures and impacts of EU consumption of goods and services were outsourced to non-EU countries, while the benefits stayed within the EU but were not evenly distributed.
The impacts of air pollution on mental health have been previously documented but rarely using nationwide large-scale data. This study investigates the short-term and long-term impacts of air pollution on urbanites’ mental health by leveraging national real-time internet search data in China.
While often perceived as being immune to adverse change, new satellite observations highlight the unexpected impacts of human activities on the world’s protected and intact forests.
The effects of expanding electric vehicle charging stations on housing values are unknown. This study fills the gap with data for California and finds that properties near charging stations show a higher price, while traffic slightly increases and particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions decrease.
Understanding global forces impacting forests is increasingly vital. This study finds that human factors follow climate as the most important factors affecting forest structure globally and are the dominant factor regionally, even in many protected areas and so-called intact forest landscapes.
Managing landscapes sustainably is challenging given the competing interests of different stakeholder groups. By combining broad ecological data with information on the ecosystem service priorities of multiple stakeholder groups, this study provides a tool to quantify the social impact of land-use changes.
Access to clean cooking is a critical issue in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). An open-source spatial tool comparing the relative potential of different cookstoves on the basis of their costs and benefits is developed and applied to SSA and shows the potential to increase the effectiveness of targeted interventions.
The stability of energy supply chains is an increasingly urgent global problem. Liquefied natural gas exported from Qatar is seen by some as a potential solution. However, the country’s infrastructure is highly vulnerable to oil spills in the Persian Gulf with the potential to further upset global gas supplies.
Dairy manure spread on crop fields leads to air and water pollution that could be mitigated through manure processing systems that capture methane to produce electricity. A recent US policy opening wholesale electricity markets to distributed energy resource systems, creates incentives to deploy manure processing systems.
Rechargeable aqueous zinc batteries are promising candidates for large-scale energy storage, but their operation is suboptimal at low temperatures. An electrolyte solution comprising two salts now enables unprecedented battery performance across a wide temperature range.
Sustainably addressing the water needs of populations in countries lacking adequate infrastructure is challenging. We discuss the potential of decentralized water and wastewater treatment using electrified processes across Latin American countries and reflect on what would help their implementation in the region.
