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Thermal power plants face growing risks from rising water temperatures and water shortages, which can reduce cooling efficiency and threaten energy security. A study maps these risks globally and finds that factoring them into plant closures could improve reliability while supporting climate goals.

Thermal power generation faces risks from rising water temperatures and scarcity, worsened by decarbonization efforts that prioritize the retirement of lower-risk units. To reconcile energy security and climate goals, policymakers should factor hydroclimatic risks into power plant retirement and energy transition planning.

Warming harms public health in Chinese cities directly via heat and indirectly by worsening air quality. Climate and epidemiological models estimate that reducing aerosols in a warmer climate can enhance atmospheric ventilation, reduce particulate matter exposure and offset warming-driven deaths.

Model simulations suggest that cropland expansion since industrialization has reduced atmospheric biogenic secondary organic aerosol by 10% and its associated radiative cooling effect by 11%.

Emission controls avoided some 870,000 deaths in China between 2002 and 2017 but further air quality improvements need energy-climate policies and changed economic structure, according to index decomposition analysis and chemical transport models.

This work reveals that international agricultural trade eases water scarcity yet exacerbates inequity, disproportionately favouring more affluent populations, thus emphasizing the necessity for pro-poor policies for inclusive sustainable development.

Water scarcity and climate change could potentially threaten energy security. This study highlights the importance of integrated power sector planning in resolving water–carbon tradeoffs by coupling unit-level dry cooling technology, alternative water supply and CO₂ storage.

Agriculture dependent on snowmelt will face serious challenges under climate change, which increases risks for countries that import these crop products. Food security and livelihoods in countries heavily exposed to global food trade may be vulnerable even though domestic production is not affected.

Snowmelt runoff is an important source of water for irrigating agricultural crops in high-mountain Asia, Central Asia, western Russia, western US and the southern Andes. Climate change places water resources in these basins at risk, indicating the need to adapt water management.

Perennial crops such as fruits and nuts, important to dietary diversity and nutrition, represent almost 40% of California’s agriculture by economic value. Here, the impacts of climate change and ozone on historical and future yields of perennial crops in California are assessed.

Observed daily changes in CO₂ emissions from across the globe reveal the sectors and countries where pandemic-related emissions declines were most pronounced in 2020.

China’s clean air action stimulated a net accumulative reduction of 2.43 Gt CO₂ emission from 2013-2020. Phase-out and upgrades of outdated, polluting, and inefficient combustion facilities have promoted the transition of the country’s energy system.

Climate mitigation policies often provide health co-benefits. Analysis of individual power plants under future climate–energy policy scenarios shows reducing air pollution-related deaths does not automatically align with emission reduction policies and that policy design needs to consider public health.

Food consumption has triggered considerable quantities of greenhouse gas emissions at various stages of the food supply chain. Tracking food-related emissions along supply chains is key to systematically identify their sources, drivers and mitigation opportunities.

Trends in the rate of region- and sector-specific land-use greenhouse gas emissions in 1961–2017 show an acceleration of about 20% per decade after 2001.

The agricultural production of food comes with substantial greenhouse gas emissions and impacts on the environment. Dietary fats, a staple of human diet, might be produced chemosynthetically with a fraction of the detrimental effects on the environment.

Global CO₂ emissions in 2021 were only 1% less than the record levels of 2019, driven by increases in power- and industry-related emissions from China and India and a return of the carbon intensity of electricity to pre-pandemic levels. Is this resumed growth in fossil energy, or a final fleeting surge before a long decline?

A comprehensive assessment of ‘committed’ carbon dioxide emissions—from existing and proposed fossil-fuel-based infrastructure—finds that these emissions may exceed the level required to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Water consumption does not put a constant stress on available supplies, but is instead a function of flexibility in demands for food, water and energy. This analysis looks at 36 years of water consumption around the globe to identify basins under the most stress, and how they can lower their intensive uses.

A revised estimate of Chinese carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production is presented, based on updated energy consumption and clinker production data and two new sets of measured emission factors for Chinese coal.

After developing a unit-based air pollutants emission inventory of more than 30,000 fossil fuel power plants operating worldwide in 2010, the authors find that retiring or implementing controlling measures on coal-fired power plants, representing 0.8% of global capacity, could reduce PM_2.5 emissions from coal-fired plants by up to 14.2%.

During extreme cold and hot events, carbon emissions and the intensity of electricity generation, and thus reliance on fossil fuels, increase in the continental United States, according to an analysis of climate reanalysis and daily electricity generation data over the period 2018–2023.