Analyses

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) electroreduction is a sustainable way to reduce the carbon footprint of producing carbon-based chemicals. This work analyses voltage distributions within CO₂ electrolysers, identifies the sources of inefficiencies and highlights opportunities for system optimization.

The effects of including the chemical industry in the existing Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism of the European Union are unclear. A study finds that the current framework covers only half of key chemical emissions, urging the addition of fossil feedstocks and tougher default rules to boost efficacy.

Increasing transparency about firms’ reporting of environmental impacts is especially important in the context of a growing ocean economy. This study analyses the content of sustainability and annual reports from 75 of the largest companies across 8 sectors of the ocean economy.

Developing strategies for reducing carbon emissions in municipal solid waste management is essential to achieve the net-zero target. Here the authors systematically assess strategy options of different countries for achieving net-zero municipal solid waste management.

Cutting emissions from urban buildings is difficult without clear knowledge of how they result from urban design and social factors. Using open data and machine learning, this study shows that planning history, income levels and urban layout all shape emissions across five diverse cities.

Antibiotic use in managed bee populations prevents losses from infectious diseases but can lead to the emergence of antibiotic resistance. Here the authors study the impact of recent regulatory restrictions on antibiotic use, in addition to climate and air pollution, on the beekeeping sector in Canada.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in sustainability-related scholarly work, such as Sustainable Development Goal research, is growing. An analysis now finds that few studies actually use AI to address normative or transformative dimensions of sustainability science, limiting the potential of relevant AI applications.

Unconventional economic approaches with transformative potential for sustainability are too dispersed to gain sufficient traction in policy. With qualitative content analysis, this study brings coherence to many documents discussing such approaches to support efforts towards mainstreaming them.

Plastics pollution has intertwined environmental, economic and social consequences calling for holistic solutions that require systems analysis. This study evaluates how and to what extent systems analysis tools are used in research on plastic pollution to support policy design.

This analysis looks at the impacts and outcomes from installing solar arrays on agricultural land, finding that these ‘agrisolar’ projects can displace food production but simultaneously provide economic security and offset water use.

Wind erosion and dust transport present challenges to human wellbeing, health and infrastructure. Last estimated for the United States in the 1990s, present economic costs of wind erosion across the United States have nearly quadrupled, and an updated assessment of vulnerable systems is required.

Parties to the Paris Agreement state their climate goals, and any action plans to meet them, in their nationally determined contributions. This study uses computational linguistic analysis to shed light on the deeper discourse within such documents.

Perovskite light-emitting diodes, an emerging lighting and display technology, are receiving increasing attention by both academia and industry. This study assesses their prospects from an environmental, economic and technical perspective.

The sudden electricity price increase in Europe in 2021 raised concerns about the ability of power markets to withstand energy price shocks without compromising climate goals. This study shows that countries with larger shares of decarbonized electricity were not more exposed to natural gas price shocks.

The illegal timber trade is one of the primary drivers of deforestation in Brazil. A study now analyses timber trade networks and supply chains to identify actors operating contrary to the regulations and continuing to support illegal timber trade.

Wildlife hunting can support diets and socio-economic well-being in communities around the world, but overexploitation can have cascading ecosystem effects. This study examines socio-cultural, economic and landscape factors associated with wildlife hunting in tropical forests in Africa.

Greener mining technologies for rare earth elements (REEs) extraction are of vital importance to creating a sustainable REEs supply. Here the authors achieve industrial-scale REEs mining with reduced environmental footprint using an electrokinetic mining technique.

Bio-based plastics have gained attention as a potentially sustainable way to reduce fossil fuel-based plastic demand and store carbon. However, large-scale adoption of bio-based alternatives could have a substantial impact on land use, including deforestation.

Many of the world’s largest cities and leading companies have separately adopted targets for emissions and water-use reductions. This study examines how co-location and collaboration could enhance efforts to stay within Earth system boundaries.

Two major discourses for agricultural sustainability, agroecology and sustainable intensification, have produced extensive research bases, but do not engage or overlap with each other. This analysis examines how these ‘silos’ may hamper further research.