News & Comment

Zeljko Jovanovic, Director of Open Society Foundations Roma Initiatives Office, talks with Nature Energy about Roma community energy security challenges, and where there is room for improved communication between policymakers and the scientific community on this issue.

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.

Dr Mohammad Hadi Mohammadi, Council for At-Risk Academics Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, shares with Nature Energy their story about fleeing Afghanistan, settling down in the UK and their hope to return home one day.

Ahead of the Global Clean Energy Action Forum, a joint convening of the 13th Clean Energy Ministerial and 7th Mission Innovation Ministerial in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this September, Nature Energy spoke with three members of the Mission Innovation Steering Committee — Drew Leyburne, MI Steering Committee Chair and Assistant Deputy Minister, Energy Efficiency and Technology Sector, Natural Resources Canada; Julie Cerqueira, incoming MI Steering Committee Chair and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of International Affairs, US Department of Energy; Rosalinde van der Vlies, Vice-Chair of the MI Steering Committee and Director, Clean Planet Directorate in the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation for the European Commission — to hear their thoughts about the next phase of clean energy technology development.

Nancy Ryan Gray, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Gordon Research Conferences (GRC), talks to Nature Energy about her career and The GRC Power Hour, a forum for discussions about inclusivity within the scientific community.

As the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow nears, calls for politicians to heed the warnings on climate change increase. We talked to Atte Harjanne, a member of parliament in Finland, to hear how some politicians are trying to incorporate scientific findings in their decisions.

In October 2019, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched its Global Strategy for Sustainable Energy. The strategy aims to support refugees, their host communities and other actors to meet their energy needs safely, affordably and sustainably. Nature Energy spoke to Andrew Harper, Director of Programmes at UNHCR, to find out more about how UNHCR see energy within the context of humanitarian response.

In April 2018, the Mini-Grid Innovation Lab was launched by The Rockefeller Foundation and CrossBoundary. Working with partners across Africa, and supported by Duke University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the lab will test business solutions for mini-grids based in Africa to find the most cost-effective and scalable solutions. In doing so, it aims to demonstrate to governments, policymakers, investors and donors that mini-grids can play a key role in providing energy access to 600 million people without power in Africa. Nature Energy spoke to Gabriel Davies of CrossBoundary about the objectives and achievements of the lab so far.

Professor M Stanley Whittingham is a pioneering researcher in the development of lithium-ion batteries at Binghamton University and Kent Snyder leads battery research and development at Ford Motor Company. Nature Energy caught up with both during the Nature Conference on Materials Electrochemistry: Fundamentals and Applications held in China in January 2018.

Ellen Williams served as Director of the US Department of Energy's ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy) from December 2014 until January 2017. Nature Energy caught up with her shortly before the end of her tenure to learn more about the agency's role in energy technology innovation.