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Transition to sustainable energy systems requires consumption that meets all human needs without excess. Rao et al. build bottom-up an assessment of energy required for decent living using gaps in decent living standards in India, Brazil and South Africa and scenarios of future energy use.
The utilization of oxygen redox is a promising way of designing high-energy cathode materials for batteries. Here, Tarascon and colleagues report a class of Li-rich layered sulfides and unravel the potential of sulfur redox.
Colloidal quantum dots and organics have complementary properties apt for photovoltaics, yet their combination has led to poor charge collection. Here, Baek et al. introduce small molecules that act as a bridge between quantum dots and polymers, thus improving device efficiency and stability.
Photocatalytic reduction of CO2 to methanol offers a promising route to storage of solar energy in the form of chemical fuels. Here, Wu et al. use in operando microscopy to identify the active facets for CO2 reduction on Cu2O and exploit this to obtain high conversion efficiency and selectivity to methanol.
Capacity markets are designed to ensure availability of sufficient production capacity to meet peak demand. Mays et al. show that these markets favour technologies such as coal and gas by mitigating their capital investment risks while not compensating for operational risks associated with solar and wind energy.
Low bandgap tin–lead perovskites are crucial to making efficient all-perovskite tandem solar cells but have so far shown poor stability. By removing the hole transport layer and improving film morphology, Prasanna et al. demonstrate a low-gap perovskite solar cell that is stable for 1,000 h under heat, light and atmospheric conditions.
Batteries generally do not perform well at extreme temperatures, and electrolytes are mainly to blame. Here, the authors dissolve fluorinated electrolytes in highly fluorinated non-polar solvents, enabling batteries that can operate at a wide temperature range (−125 to +70 °C).
In 2014 China proposed an ultra-low emissions policy for coal-fired power plants to reduce emissions. Using comprehensive nationwide stack emissions monitoring data, Tang et al. show reductions in excess of 60% for SO2, NOx and particulate matter emissions since 2014, even as power generation overall increased.
Improvements in the efficiency and stability of low-bandgap perovskite solar cells are key to enabling all-perovskite solar cells. Here, Lin et al. use metallic tin to prevent oxidation in such low-gap perovskite and demonstrate 24.8%-efficient tandems that are stable for over 400 h under operating conditions.
CO2 electrolysers store electricity as CO or other chemical fuels, but can suffer from carbon deposition at the electrodes. Skafte et al. identify a mechanistic route to inhibiting carbon build-up in ceria-based electrolysers and build a cell that operates beyond the thermodynamic carbon deposition threshold.
People make systematic errors when estimating the energy used by household appliances. This study shows that providing numerical information about extremes improves the use of the response scale, while a heuristic addressing a common misperception improves the underlying understanding of relative energy use.
A German government commission recently proposed to phase out coal by 2038, which implies that the country will miss its 2020 climate target. This study shows that a more ambitious timeline for phasing out coal by 2025 would have been better aligned with citizens’ preferences.
Parasitic reactions between Li metal and electrolytes need to be mitigated in Li-metal batteries. Here, the authors report the use of a fluorinated orthoformate-based electrolyte, leading to a monolithic solid–electrolyte interphase and subsequently a high-performance Li-metal battery.
Conventionally, the two half reactions involved in water electrolysis occur simultaneously, presenting materials and process challenges. Here, the authors decouple these to split water efficiently in two steps: electrochemical hydrogen evolution, followed by spontaneous oxygen evolution at elevated temperature.
Liquid products from electrocatalytic CO2 reduction are often mixed with additional solutes in the electrolyte, meaning that downstream separation is required. Here, the authors design cells that use solid electrolytes to generate flows of CO2-derived liquid fuels with high concentrations that are free of extraneous ions.
Organic photovoltaics are promising for indoor applications, yet their voltage losses are large and limit device performance. Here, Cui et al. present a wide-gap non-fullerene acceptor that retains a voltage of 1.1 V at low light intensities enabling an efficiency of 26.1%.
CdTe solar cells have relied for decades on copper, which creates limited hole density, stability issues and a ceiling for voltage and efficiency. Now, Metzger et al. demonstrate As-doped Cu-free polycrystalline CdTe cells with enhanced hole density and dopant stability, achieving 20.8% efficiency.
Although solar photovoltaic use grows rapidly in China, comparison with grid prices is difficult as photovoltaic electricity prices depend on local factors. Using prefecture-level data, Yan et al. find that 100% of user-side systems can achieve grid parity, while 22% can produce electricity cheaper than coal-based power plants.
Ultrathin solar cells having thicknesses below 1 µm can still reach efficiencies comparable to their thicker counterparts, but require less material to manufacture. By exploiting light-trapping nanostructures, Chen and colleagues achieve GaAs solar cells with 20% efficiency at just 205 nm thicknesses.
Maximizing energy gain and minimizing life-cycle emissions from wastes and biomass residues requires a holistic assessment of alternative energy recovery pathways. Liu and Rajagopal estimate that the United States can generate up to 3.2 EJ of net energy and reduce up to 178 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent GHG emissions from 29 different waste streams combined.