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Ontario, Canada, has seen a number of policy measures introduced since 2009 to increase wind energy production. This Perspective explores the impacts and implications of those policies on wind energy disputes in terms of health, financial benefit, community engagement and the landscape.

The processing of high-performance organic solar cells usually requires environmentally hazardous solvents. Now, hydrocarbon-based processing is shown to achieve relatively high performance in a more environmentally friendly way.

The use of doped-silicon contacts in silicon solar cells adds cost and complexity to the fabrication process. These issues can now be circumvented by using dopant-free carrier-selective interfaces on silicon, realized by alkali metal fluorides and metal oxides.

The thermal degradation of perovskite solar cells is an obstacle to their commercialization. Now, the mechanisms for thermally induced structural and chemical changes are identified by in situ measurements in a transmission electron microscope.

It is challenging to integrate a natural photosystem with a redox enzyme on an electrode to convert light energy into electricity. Now, photo-bioelectrochemical cells with efficient photocurrent generation are demonstrated with such an integration.

Organic–inorganic perovskites are promising materials for photovoltaic devices, however they have poor tolerance to ambient humidity. Now, their surface can be functionalized with water-resistant molecules to stabilize their performance under humid conditions.

The efficiency of perovskite solar cells is limited by the performance of the hole-transport material, which extracts charges from the active layer. Here, a molecularly engineered hole transporter with performance comparable to spiro-OMeTAD is demonstrated.

Ensuring safety during operation is a major issue in the development of lithium-ion batteries. Coating the electrode current collector with thermoresponsive polymer composites is now shown to rapidly shut the battery down when it overheats, and to quickly resume its function when normal operating conditions return.

Energy storage will play a key role in increasing the use of variable energy sources. Nonetheless, storage is not the only balancing option and the overall design of power systems will incorporate a range of flexible generation, storage and grid-balancing options of different types and scales.

Energy systems around the globe are changing in response to new technological developments and environmental and social pressures. Making the most of these changes requires a concerted effort from academia, industry and government — an effort Nature Energy intends to support.

The open-circuit voltage is one of the parameters determining the efficiency of solar cells in converting solar radiation to electricity. Reducing the structural disorder in fullerene electron-transport layers is now shown to significantly improve the open-circuit voltage of perovskite solar cells.

Household energy conservation can help to significantly lower energy consumption. Visual cues provided by thermal imaging of heat loss in buildings are now shown to increase energy conserving behaviours and implementations among homeowners more effectively than just performing carbon footprint audits.

The sustainable production of hydrogen is key to the delivery of clean energy in a hydrogen economy; however, lower-cost alternatives to platinum electrocatalysts are needed. Now, isolated, earth-abundant cobalt atoms dispersed over nitrogen-doped graphene are shown to efficiently electrolyse water to generate hydrogen.

Many people globally still use solid fuels for cooking and heating, leading to programmes designed to subsidize cleaner alternatives. This study analyses possible effects of climate mitigation policies on fuel costs and hence the effectiveness of such schemes.

Ongoing efforts are devoted to raising the efficiency of solar cells in converting energy from solar radiation. Now, improved structural order in the charge transport layers of perovskite solar cells is shown to increase the efficiency from 17.1% to 19.4%.

The past five years have seen substantial cost reductions and greatly increased uptake of photovoltaics. Growth is being driven by ongoing improvements in both silicon solar cell costs and performance, making the commercialization of new technologies increasingly difficult.