Solar panels can reduce domestic electricity bills, but their cost often makes them unavailable to low-income households. This ten-month study follows the journeys of seven social-housing tenants who were given the opportunity to become solar-power prosumers, and the impact this had on their everyday practices, finances and lives.

The carbon and energy efficiencies of current CO₂/CO electrolysis systems are limited. Here the authors show that these metrics can be improved by controlling ion flows in the vicinity of a copper catalyst by the application of a covalent organic framework.

Li–S chemistry can provide high-energy-density batteries. Here the authors use lithiated metallic phase 2D materials as a sulfur host for cathodes that leads to high-energy-density Li–S pouch cell batteries.

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.

Direct seawater electrolysis is an approach to produce hydrogen from an abundant water source, but current catalysts face performance and durability challenges. Here Guo et al. introduce a hard Lewis acid layer on the catalyst surface that generates local alkalinity, facilitating water splitting and minimizing degradation.

The root cause of lithium dendrites during battery cycling is of fundamental interest. By performing operando microprobe experiments and statistical analyses, the authors report that lithium dendrites are initiated via nanoscale mechanical defects and can be manipulated via globally applied stresses.

Perovskite photovoltaics are promising for space applications, but their reliability needs to be addressed. Now, Kirmani et al. present a 1-μm-thick silicon oxide that affords protection against protons, alpha particles and atomic oxygen.

Efficient mechanical energy harvesting approaches are needed. Here, Zhang et al. develop a plied carbon nanotube yarn that harvests mechanical energy upon stretching and lateral deformations, achieving 17.4 and 22.4% efficiencies for tensile and torsional harvesting, respectively.

The COVID-19 pandemic had substantial social and economic impacts globally but particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This study reports survey findings on changes to household energy use and engagement with a government liquefied petroleum gas scheme in rural North India in 2020 and 2021.

Public support or opposition plays an important role in the deployment of new energy technologies. This study explores how attitudes towards fracking in the United Kingdom can influence perceptions of geothermal systems and hydrogen, testing spontaneous, prompted and primed forms of the spillover effect.

José Miguel Bermúdez Menéndez, energy technology analyst on hydrogen and alternative fuels at the International Energy Agency (IEA), talks to Nature Energy about the IEA’s Hydrogen Projects Database, which was last updated in October 2022.