Energy and society articles from across Nature Portfolio

Clean energy presents opportunities to reduce poverty and improve air quality on federally recognized indigenous land in the continental United States. Analysis now provides a step change in our understanding of the potential benefits of renewable power development on reservation lands, increasing our understanding towards equitable energy transition.

The energy used to heat or cool buildings does not only contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but also to other direct forms of heat exchange between buildings and their environment. A study now quantifies the feedback between buildings and their surrounding temperatures, yielding more reliable estimates of the contribution of heating and cooling to local and global warming and better estimates of regional energy demands.

In the United States, Democrats and Republicans are more likely to support energy projects that are community-owned, create jobs, and generate solar energy, but local elected officials underestimate their constituents’ support for projects with these characteristics. Since these officials play a key role in approving new energy projects and negotiating the benefits they bring to communities, aligning local elected officials’ perceptions with the public’s could improve progress toward just energy transitions.

Foreign investments in recent years drive the expansion of fossil fuel electricity generation in emerging economies, yet necessary quantification still lacks. This Article shows how overseas coal-fired power plants could drive future trajectories of CO₂ emissions in host countries.

Van Ouwerkerk and colleagues examine the benefits of renewable energy investments for German households during the recent energy crisis. They find a typical household with a heat pump saved 1850 € and reduced emissions by 250 g/kWh annually, leading to greater gains in resilience when compared to temporary price breaks on energy.

Clean energy presents opportunities to reduce poverty and improve air quality on federally recognized indigenous land in the continental United States. Analysis now provides a step change in our understanding of the potential benefits of renewable power development on reservation lands, increasing our understanding towards equitable energy transition.

Flexible organic photovoltaics and energy storage systems have profound implications for future wearable electronics. Here, the authors discuss the transformative potential and challenges associated with the integrative design of these systems for energy harvesting.

Compressing global energy and industrial system decarbonization into less than three decades creates unique social, technical, financial and political risks. Here we introduce ‘off-ramps’ as one potential approach to manage these whilst still driving rapid emissions reductions.

Electricity access statistics used to track progress against the Sustainable Development Goal 7.1 set by the United Nations have significant uncertainties, which may bring into question the electrification status of at least 87.2 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. Consequently, we call for a re-evaluation of the definitions of electricity access used by international organizations and the methodologies applied to calculate them.

The energy used to heat or cool buildings does not only contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but also to other direct forms of heat exchange between buildings and their environment. A study now quantifies the feedback between buildings and their surrounding temperatures, yielding more reliable estimates of the contribution of heating and cooling to local and global warming and better estimates of regional energy demands.

In the United States, Democrats and Republicans are more likely to support energy projects that are community-owned, create jobs, and generate solar energy, but local elected officials underestimate their constituents’ support for projects with these characteristics. Since these officials play a key role in approving new energy projects and negotiating the benefits they bring to communities, aligning local elected officials’ perceptions with the public’s could improve progress toward just energy transitions.