Volume 6 Issue 9, September 2021

Adoption of distributed energy resources such as wind and solar can exacerbate energy inequality. A new study shows that inequality in opportunity to adopt renewable energy resources may already be baked into the grid infrastructure design.

Electrolyte materials that consist of metals with organic ligands represent a promising direction for flow battery research. Now, an iron complex with the combination of bipyridine and cyanide ligands is demonstrated to have improved voltage and solubility over the commonly used ferrocyanide couple.

A growing body of research has sought to provide a better understanding of the determinants of energy poverty and how best to assist vulnerable groups that are at greatest risk of being energy poor. A new study examines how policy reform away from fixed and age-based support helps address energy poverty in Australia.

Mechanical reliability of perovskite solar cells is an important factor in ensuring their operational stability, yet it remains a critical challenge. Researchers have now demonstrated that interfacial self-assembled monolayers increase adhesion toughness between the perovskite and charge-transport layers, enhancing the device stability.

Understanding future costs of energy technologies is crucial for making good decisions about the energy transition. A new paper shows that some types of forecasts have done better than others.

The challenge of how to handle large volumes of silicon photovoltaic (PV) panels at the end of their 30-year lifetime is emerging. Now, a new study reveals that the efficacy of recycling and reuse interventions is underestimated if social factors such as the attitude of PV owners and the influence of peers are not considered.

Metal–organic framework (MOF) membranes could lower the energy burden of molecular separations, but are impeded by challenges in fabricating defect-free MOF layers. Now, researchers design an electrochemical approach for growing high-performance MOF membranes on industrially relevant substrates.

Silicon-containing batteries are increasingly becoming a reality in the mass market, but their calendar aging behaviours have received comparatively little attention. Researchers from the Silicon Consortium Project discuss the issues surrounding the calendar lifetime of silicon anodes for lithium-ion batteries.

The development of aqueous organic redox flow batteries suffers from the limited availability of high-performance catholytes. Here the authors design a metal organic complex catholyte material with a tunable redox potential, which offers promise for high-energy long-lasting flow batteries.

Metal–organic framework membranes may be able to separate mixtures of hydrocarbons in an energy-efficient manner, but high-quality robust membranes are difficult to prepare. Here, Zhou et al. fabricate high-performance continuous metal–organic framework membranes using an electrochemical method.

There are racial and wealth disparities in the adoption of distributed solar energy, although the potential for infrastructure limits to exacerbate these disparities is not well understood. Brockway et al. estimate the potential impact of grid infrastructure limitations on the adoption of distributed energy resources by demographic groups in California.

Urea oxidation could be a lower-energy alternative to water oxidation in hydrogen-producing electrolysers, but improved catalysts are required to facilitate the reaction. Geng et al. report nickel ferrocyanide as a promising catalyst and suggest that it operates via a different pathway to that of previous materials.

Techno-economic studies of photovoltaic solar cells recycling and reuse often do not take into account the impact of social factors. Walzberg et al. use an agent-based model to estimate the quantitative impact of behavioural choices on photovoltaic recycling efficacy.

Behavioural interventions can reduce energy consumption and hence carbon emissions among households. Khanna et al. compare the effectiveness of different types of monetary and non-monetary household interventions using a machine learning-assisted meta-analysis, and examine the situations where each is most useful.

Almost 30 years since the inception of lithium-ion batteries, lithium–nickel–manganese–cobalt oxides are becoming the favoured cathode type in automobile batteries. Their success lies primarily with their superior energy density relative to lithium–cobalt oxide, lithium–manganese oxide and lithium–iron phosphate electrodes.