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Electric aircraft offer an aviation decarbonization pathway and attract increasing attention owing to the rapid development of batteries. Here Andreas Schäfer and colleagues analyse the potential technological, economic and environmental viability of battery-electric commercial aircraft.
Multilateral development banks are known to finance a significant number of new power plants in low-income countries, and have been pushing for more renewables. Here, researchers build a bottom-up dataset of more than 800 projects from 10 banks to quantify the extent to which these banks have greened their portfolios.
Although rigid silicon panels dominate the solar power market, they are unsuitable for niche applications such as portable charging or drones, where thin-film and flexible technologies would be advantageous. This Analysis examines the needs of niche markets and the packaging weights that would be required to enable such photovoltaic devices to enter them.
Germany is the first major country to pursue an energy transition based on decentralized renewables. This Analysis finds that news media coverage of the ‘Energiewende’ in the United Kingdom, Finland and Hungary focuses on techno-economics, but normative assessments reflect local visions of a good society.
Understanding the water–energy nexus requires a detailed picture of how the two resources are linked. Towards this end, Chini et al. combine concepts of virtual water transfers with water-usage data for electricity generation to visualize and analyse the virtual water transfers for the US electricity grid from 2010–2016.
In the Middle East, new solar projects are being launched where developers have agreed to provide solar energy at record-low costs to utilities. Here, researchers analyse the key factors contributing to the low cost, showing that it is possible to replicate similar costs in other parts of the world.
Achieving sustainable development goals while meeting the 1.5 °C climate target requires radical changes to how we use energy. A scenario of low energy demand shows how this can be done by down-sizing the global energy system to enable feasible deployment rates of renewable energy resources.
Predictability of energy quantities such as natural gas price and oil production is important for planning and finance not just in energy markets but national economies. Here, researchers show that the energy industry was more volatile and harder to predict in the last decade than previous decades.
Energy systems are transitioning from fossil fuel sources to renewable sources with lower net energy generation. Using the concept of energy return on investment, this study finds that net energy per capita is likely to greatly decrease without more efficiency savings or energy infrastructure.
