Comment

Lithium-rich cathode materials face challenges due to the irreversibility of redox processes at high voltages, limiting their practical use. However, their significant potential is evident in applications like low-speed e-mobility, and their integration into solid-state electrolytes could pave the way for wider adoption in the future.

Coal and carbon-intensive regions have lagged behind in socioeconomic development, long before any transition-related structural changes were foreseeable. Acknowledging and tackling the compounding effects of old legacy and new transition injustices is vital for realizing a truly just energy transition.

Hydrogen system testbeds powered by renewables at kilowatt–megawatt scale reduce technical and financial risk by providing evidence to inform decisions on economic viability for investments at commercial scale. Future-proofing these testbeds to ‘plug and play’ new components or technologies may accelerate low-regret uptake of innovation.

Utilities are increasingly using ratepayer-backed bonds (RBBs) to provide financial protection against extreme weather and more broadly, the energy transition. Consequently, we outline best practices for public utility commissions and ratepayer advocates to reduce financing costs and protect ratepayers in the execution of RBBs.

A framework for governments to define their domestic energy transition mineral needs, sources, and contributions to the global energy transition can improve domestic policies around the world and enable greater national and global coordination to avoid supply crises and resource conflicts.

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 understanding of justice in the energy sector has now been harmonized across stakeholders, causing risk, reward and — in particular — responsibility to be reallocated towards energy companies and governments. Energy decision-makers today will be held legally accountable for past decisions, and this will influence how decisions are made today.

Decision makers need sector-specific, policy-focused, dynamic economic models with rich representations of technological progress. These allow them to understand how the energy transition is likely to unfold with different policies and what its impacts might be. A new generation of models is emerging to meet these demands, but more action is needed.

Where host communities are marginalized by industry practices, energy social science researchers must ensure that their research does not doubly exacerbate extractive practices. Place-based reflexivity provides a set of principles and concrete practices for researchers to avoid extractive relations with host communities and promote contextually relevant and democratic processes in pursuit of a just transition.

A differentiated natural gas market is emerging as a key mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across global natural gas supply chains. Trust in such voluntary markets across civil society, industry and governments depends on a transparent framework for reporting independently verifiable and accurate emissions data.

Access to clean energy is essential to sustainable human development. We thus have a responsibility and an opportunity to meet the global goal of ending energy poverty by 2030. We propose the creation of a new Mission Energy Access programme to support this aim.

The shift away from mining presents substantial livelihood security challenges for mining communities, but documented mining closures offer insights into how to ensure a successful transition. Secure community transitions require support from governments in the form of proactive planning, locally led collaborative responses and targeted investments.

As the stability of organic and perovskite solar cells improves, accelerated ageing methods become increasingly essential to elucidate their long-term degradation mechanisms and to predict their real-world operational lifetimes. By effectively applying these underutilized tests, emerging photovoltaic technologies can be de-risked and their time to market can be expedited.

Europe’s approach to energy security has been historically split between the East and West. Given the rapidly evolving geopolitical energy security landscape on the continent, we argue that a comprehensive and shared approach to energy security — which incorporates hard security considerations — is needed.

The growing importance of long-term planning in European Union member states’ energy poverty policies makes it necessary to develop forecasting techniques to support related policy decision-making. The combination of machine learning and econometrics holds promise in the field provided that several crucial challenges are tackled.

Australia’s newly announced national Net Zero Authority offers an opportunity to constructively engage coal communities in planning for a decarbonized future. After years of toxic and dysfunctional climate politics, it is essential that the Authority engages with the complexity of coal and the communities at the heart of transition.

Despite increased attention, residential energy insecurity is a widespread and persistent problem in the USA. We commend ongoing investigations, urge scholars to continue to examine why some households disproportionately experience energy insecurity, and offer several lines of inquiry that may help reduce energy insecurity’s incidence and impact.

Today’s sodium-ion batteries can not only be used in stationary energy storage applications, but also in 160–280 mile driving-range five-passenger electric vehicles. This technology will alleviate some of the supply-chain issues arising from limited resources of materials used in the ubiquitous lithium-ion batteries.

Differences in the approach to community acceptance of energy technologies can muddy visions of energy futures. Acknowledgement of the tensions around justice perspectives and the degree of desired change can improve scholarship and policy dialogue.

Comprehensive and meaningful inclusion of marginalized communities within the research enterprise will be critical to ensuring an equitable, technology-informed, clean energy transition. We provide five key action items for government agencies and philanthropic institutions to operationalize the commitment to an equitable energy transition.