Energy and society articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chinese government has implemented regulations to reduce mining-related methane emission since 2010. Here the authors estimated methane emissions in China using GOSAT satellite observation and results reveal a business-as-usual increase in methane emissions since 2010 despite those ambitious targets.

    • Scot M. Miller
    • , Anna M. Michalak
    •  & Stefan Schwietzke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change will affect both the demand for electrical power and the generating capabilities of hydropower plants. Here the authors investigated the combined impact of these effects in the US Pacific Northwest by considering the dynamics of the regional  power grid, where they reveal a profound impact of climate change on power shortfall risk by the year 2035.

    • S. W. D. Turner
    • , N. Voisin
    •  & M. Jourabchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Local air quality co-benefits can provide convincing support for climate action. Here the authors revisited air quality co-benefits of climate action in the context of NDCs and found that 71–99 thousand premature deaths can be avoided each year by 2030, offsetting the climate mitigation costs on a global level.

    • Toon Vandyck
    • , Kimon Keramidas
    •  & Bert Saveyn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reinjection of saltwater, co-produced with oil, has the potential to trigger damaging earthquakes. Here, using Oklahoma and Kansas as an example, the authors present a new physics-based methodology to forecast future probabilities of potentially damaging induced-earthquakes in space and time.

    • Cornelius Langenbruch
    • , Matthew Weingarten
    •  & Mark D. Zoback

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantifying burden on hydropower units for balancing variable renewable energy sources has been uncertain and difficult. Herein Yang et al. propose a framework and characterize the burden, performance and compensation of hydropower regulation of renewable power systems.

    • Weijia Yang
    • , Per Norrlund
    •  & Urban Lundin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effects of battery degradation on the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from electric vehicles are unknown. Here the authors show that the lifetime of a typical battery is between 5.2 and 13.3 years across the U.S., with an 11.5–16.2% increase in energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

    • Fan Yang
    • , Yuanyuan Xie
    •  & Chris Yuan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The use of drones to deliver commercial packages is poised to become a new industry. Here the authors show that replacing truck delivery by drones can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy use when the drone size and additional warehousing requirements are limited.

    • Joshuah K. Stolaroff
    • , Constantine Samaras
    •  & Daniel Ceperley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exposure to ambient particulate matter is a key contributor to disease in India and source attribution is vital for pollution control. Here the authors use a high-resolution regional model to show residential emissions dominate particulate matter concentrations and associated premature mortality.

    • Luke Conibear
    • , Edward W. Butt
    •  & Dominick V. Spracklen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To suppress the polysulfide shuttling effect in Li-S batteries, here the authors report a carbon/sulfur composite cathode with a wrapping layer that overcomes the trade-off between limiting polysulfide diffusion and allowing electrolyte infiltration, and affords extraordinary cycling stability.

    • Chenji Hu
    • , Hongwei Chen
    •  & Liwei Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change may alter building energy demand. Here, the authors quantify changes in residential electricity and natural gas demand in Los Angeles County and find that rising temperatures may increase electricity demand by 41–87% between 2020 and 2060, but improved efficiency could lower this increase to 28%.

    • Janet L. Reyna
    •  & Mikhail V. Chester

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While the photovoltaic industry aims to achieve cleaner energy production, it consumes energy and emits greenhouse gases during production and deployment. Here, Louwenet al. show that the industry has likely already reached break-even points for both greenhouse gases emissions and electricity consumption.

    • Atse Louwen
    • , Wilfried G. J. H. M. van Sark
    •  & Ruud E. I. Schropp

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