Featured
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Article
| Open Access
China’s electric vehicle and climate ambitions jeopardized by surging critical material prices
Under a high-cost scenario for battery critical materials, the uptake of electric vehicles in China may be greatly reduced, leading to increased cumulative carbon emissions. This may jeopardize both China’s electric vehicle and climate targets.
- Hetong Wang
- , Kuishuang Feng
- & Jiashuo Li
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Article
| Open Access
Ports’ criticality in international trade and global supply-chains
A new study presents a new global modeling framework to explore the links between ports, maritime transport and global supply-chains, and identifies critical links and dependencies between 1300 ports and the economies that depend on them.
- J. Verschuur
- , E. E. Koks
- & J. W. Hall
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Article
| Open Access
Efficiency stagnation in global steel production urges joint supply- and demand-side mitigation efforts
The effectiveness of large historical efforts for decarbonizing steel production is unclear. Here, the authors show that such efficiency gains were offset by a booming steel demand increase. This has led to a stagnating decarbonization progress over past decades, which jeopardizes realization of future climate targets.
- Peng Wang
- , Morten Ryberg
- & Wei-Qiang Chen
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Article
| Open Access
Market-oriented job skill valuation with cooperative composition neural network
The value assessment of job skills is critical for companies to select and retain the right talent and for individuals to develop them. Here the authors show that a data-driven method based on an enhanced neural network can assign meaningful value to job skills in a quantitative way and outperforms benchmark models for job salary prediction.
- Ying Sun
- , Fuzhen Zhuang
- & Hui Xiong
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Article
| Open Access
Productive Ecosystems and the arrow of development
As countries experience economic growth, diversification of economic activities may occur. Here, the authors develop a probabilistic model to examine the diversification of economic activities and how countries may move from small ecosystem products to advanced product clusters over time.
- Neave O’Clery
- , Muhammed Ali Yıldırım
- & Ricardo Hausmann
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Perspective
| Open Access
Microplastic regulation should be more precise to incentivize both innovation and environmental safety
Plastic pollution is recognized as a global threat, but policy hurdles and a lack of effective plastic substitutes contribute to the problem. In this Perspective, the authors argue that an effective and sustainable path forward must rely on key restrictions and regulations optimized for impact and efficacy.
- Denise M. Mitrano
- & Wendel Wohlleben
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Article
| Open Access
The social and environmental complexities of extracting energy transition metals
As low-carbon energy technologies advance, markets are driving demand for energy transition metals, increasing the stress placed on people and the environment in extractive locations. Here, the authors quantify this stress by developing a set of global composite environmental, social and governance risk indicators, and find that 84% of platinum resources and 70% of cobalt resources are located in high-risk contexts.
- Éléonore Lèbre
- , Martin Stringer
- & Rick K. Valenta
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Article
| Open Access
Modular gateway-ness connectivity and structural core organization in maritime network science
It is crucial to understand the evolving structure of global liner shipping system. Here the authors unveiled the architecture of a recent global liner shipping network (GLSN) and show that the structure of global liner shipping system has evolved to be self-organized with a trade-off between high transportation efficiency and low wiring cost and ports’ gateway-ness is most highly associated with ports’ economic performance.
- Mengqiao Xu
- , Qian Pan
- & Carlo Vittorio Cannistraci
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Article
| Open Access
The emergence of cost effective battery storage
It is important to examine the economic viability of battery storage investments. Here the authors introduced the Levelized Cost of Energy Storage metric to estimate the breakeven cost for energy storage and found that behind-the-meter storage installations will be financially advantageous in both Germany and California.
- Stephen Comello
- & Stefan Reichelstein
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Article
| Open Access
Inherent potential of steelmaking to contribute to decarbonisation targets via industrial carbon capture and storage
Carbon budget is diminishing to comply with the target under 2 °C scenario. Facing the limited capacity to improve energy efficiency, the authors show that steelmaking with inherent decarbonisation process can potentially help achieve 2050 emission reduction targets under 2 °C scenario before 2030.
- Sicong Tian
- , Jianguo Jiang
- & Vasilije Manovic
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The effects of 118 years of industrial fishing on UK bottom trawl fisheries
Fish stocks in the ocean are known to be under threat. Here, using government data describing commercial fish landings, Thurstan and colleagues show that these stocks began to decline rapidly in the 1970s.
- Ruth H. Thurstan
- , Simon Brockington
- & Callum M. Roberts
Effects of emissions caps on the costs and feasibility of low-carbon hydrogen in the European ammonia industry