Research articles

Critical clean energy materials exhibit supply risks due to unbalanced cross-country production and consumption patterns. A study now maps the global distribution of mineral property rights, through foreign direct investment, to show its potential role in reducing critical materials’ supply risks.

Safety is only one side of the coin for aqueous batteries. Here the authors show a water-in-polymer electrolyte that shows a wide electrochemical window and salt recyclability, thus addressing challenges at the other side.

Rice is a staple crop for much of the world’s population, but its production can be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Supplemental nano iron oxides application can halve these emissions while boosting crop yield.

Carbon neutrality complicates the transition to sustainability due to potential adverse effects on employment and the prosperity of high-emitting sectors. This study simulated the Hungarian economy and tested various strategies for reducing CO₂ emissions, revealing that decarbonization-induced economic and job losses can be substantially limited by considering the firm-level network of supply chains.

Cement is a ubiquitous material in modern construction, but produces substantial carbon emissions. Emerging technologies exist that can reduce cement’s carbon footprint, but the right strategies must be implemented ambitiously and synergistically to be effective.

The energy sector has led to the creation of marine artificial structures such as oil and gas installations and offshore wind farms. This global meta-analysis assesses whether such structures can act as artificial reefs and benefit the marine environment when left at sea following decommissioning.

Evaluating the sustainability impacts of housing policies for low- and moderate-income households is challenging. This study links observations of housing programme participation and utility consumption to quantify the benefits of locally administered housing policies in a typical community in the American Southeast.

This work shows an integrated device that could harvest osmosis energy at one side and then drive efficient production of green hydrogen from seawater at the other side.

With a sustainable carbohydrate core, the proposed polyamide plastic design here can compete with fossil-based alternative in terms of both performance and cost.

An increasingly warm climate can lead to more intense, frequent and longer periods of hazardous heat, increasing the risk of heat-related health concerns. This study assesses whether incarcerated people in the United States are potentially disproportionately exposed to such hazardous heat conditions.

Landfills are a major methane emitter, but the current bottom-up inventories used for emissions accounting are poorly constrained and show strong biases. Improved emissions estimates show that across the globe, methane emissions from individual landfills have been underestimated by up to 200%.

The impacts of the war in Ukraine on global food systems have multiple sustainability implications that are yet to be examined. This study simulates the potential war-induced cropland expansion worldwide and presents a biodiversity impact assessment, showing the most affected countries.

Sustainable end-of-life management strategies for fibre-reinforced plastics are urgently needed from a sustainability perspective. Here the authors develop a solvent-free flash upcycling method, enabling ultrafast and efficient upcycling of fibre-reinforced plastics to fulfil such a need.

Urea is an essential fertilizer; however, its production is carbon and energy intensive. This work shows a pulsed co-electrolysis strategy that turns carbon dioxide and nitrate to urea directly utilising a molecular electrocatalyst.

Rechargeable zinc–air batteries are a sustainable energy storage system, but their performance is not yet competitive. Now a mesoporous single-atom catalyst steers the sluggish four-electron oxygen reduction reaction pathway to a faster two-electron process and enables highly reversible zinc–air batteries.

Using decades of high-resolution mapping, this study tracks the land area of the wildland–urban interface that is exposed to fire risk, finding increases in both area and risk in multiple locations globally.

Picturing positive changes resulting from greener transport policies can be more effective than trying to shift climate beliefs, often related to party affiliations. A study shows how AI pictures of future car-free cities enhanced Americans’ willingness to support more sustainable transport policies.

Understanding the forces behind the successful governance of common-pool resources is crucial to sustainable development. This study reveals the importance of establishing and enforcing ‘access rights’ in the face of intergroup conflicts over resources to facilitate the evolution of sustainable ‘use rights’.

Extreme rainfall events, amplified by climate change, can stress public health, but efforts to assess health impacts have been fragmented so far. A study now analyses the relation between extreme rainfall and mortality from respiratory diseases across urban environments in East Asia.

The poor structural stability of cathode materials is responsible for the rapid capacity loss of sodium-ion batteries during cycling. This work addresses the instability by introducing vacancies into the transition metal layers and realize long-life pouch cells.