Volume 4 Issue 1, January 2019

Energy poverty in the European Union poses a distinct challenge across member states and requires tailored, targeted action. EU policymakers need to strengthen the response to energy poverty and engender action across member states, moving beyond the focus on vulnerable consumers in energy markets.

Aluminium−graphite batteries can reversibly store AlCl₄^– ions at their cathodes, but the large consumption of electrolytes reduces their specific energy. Here a cathode based on redox-active triangular organic molecules is shown to be able to take up AlCl₂⁺, offering hope towards complete Al-ion storage.

Efficient conversion of low-grade heat into useful power is a challenge. A new approach using magnetocaloric materials and a pretzel-like magnetic field topology offers a simple way of generating electrical power from heat with improved efficiency.

Multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, have been encouraging countries to invest more in green-energy technologies. Analysis of project data suggests their own renewable energy portfolios have also grown in step.

Separators are an essential part of current lithium-ion batteries. Vanessa Wood and co-workers review the properties of separators, discuss their relationship with battery performance and survey the techniques for characterizing separators.

Wakes from upwind wind farms can reduce energy generation at downwind farms. Here, using power production data and atmospheric simulations, researchers quantify the economic impacts of wakes, explain the physics of wake variability and highlight that no legal framework exists to protect downwind farms.

A natural field experiment found that real-time feedback on energy consumption while showering led to an 11.4% reduction in energy use in a random sample of hotel guests, demonstrating the potential for activity-specific feedback as a cost-effective and scalable conservation strategy.

Large variations exist in the revenue prediction of grid-scale storage due to uncertainties in operations of storage technologies. Here the authors integrate the economic evaluation of energy storage with key battery parameters for a realistic measure of revenues.

The development of aluminium batteries relies heavily on the discovery of cathode materials that can reversibly insert Al-containing ions. Here the authors show that phenanthrenequinone-based compounds can take up the cationic aluminium complex, leading to promising aluminium batteries.

The oxygen reduction reaction, catalysed by platinum, is a crucial process in the operation of fuel cells, but the mechanistic pathways through which it occurs remain a matter for debate. Here, the authors use in situ Raman spectroscopy to identify key intermediates for this reaction at different atomically flat platinum surfaces, shedding light on the mechanism.

Thermomagnetic generators exploit magnetic flux and temperature differences across magnetocaloric materials to generate electricity from waste heat. Waske et al. present a device based on a pretzel-like magnetic-field topology that leads to a higher power output than previous, simpler, topologies.

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.