Energy & Environmental Science – looking to the future

This decade will be critical for both climate change and sustainable development. In the next ten years, we not only have the chance to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions enough to avoid the most dangerous consequences of climate change but we also have the chance to reach the UN's sustainable development goals for energy, climate and sustainable use of resources (among others). Our collective future rests on finding ways to make these changes in time.

These are the challenges where scientists working in the field of energy have a most valuable contribution to make. Energy & Environmental Science (EES), as the first major journal to embrace the field with all its complexity and diversity, has a central role to play. I am privileged to take over from Joe Hupp as Chair of the Editorial Board this month. It is my ambition that EES will not only continue to serve the community of energy researchers through dissemination of results but promote the most important questions, stimulate new discoveries and strategies, and attract more talent and more attention to the field of energy research.

Decarbonising our energy supply is a task that will involve the efficient use of energy and resources; generation of low-carbon power and heat; energy storage and distribution; integration of different functions into a working system; and framing the evidence in clear and accessible terms. Although we have come far (in my field of solar photovoltaics we have seen global capacity rise from 13 GWp to over 1 TWp in the time since EES was founded), we face an unprecedented transition that needs to be faster and more disruptive than anything we have seen to date. At the same time, the transition should be politically, economically and socially sustainable and just.

Some of the challenge can be met by technologies that are already mature, but even for ‘solved’ problems, like solar photovoltaics, continuing innovation can reduce costs and accelerate development. In some other areas, such as finding the ideal materials for electrocatalysts or electrochemical energy storage, well-defined challenges remain. In others, such as greenhouse gas removal and decarbonisation of industrial processes, viable approaches still need to be defined.

If we are to meet this challenge we need to be able to take ideas from their conception through to full roll-out, tackling all of the research questions that arise. EES will continue to communicate discoveries in key areas such as the materials science of energy technologies. As we progress, challenges associated with implementation will develop, and other topics become more prominent in the EES portfolio. These may include, the use of data science and high-throughput experimentation in the search for optimum materials and strategies; integration of different technologies to meet need rather than maximise individual figures of merit; system-level approaches to better evaluate the potential role of new technologies; and a greater focus on energy and resource efficiency to minimise scarcity and waste. Above all there is a continuing need for new discoveries, ideas and methods that are simply inspired by the challenges of energy and climate change mitigation. The beauty of EES is that its scope allows for all these types of challenge, method and discipline to be included and combined. I wish our readers and authors the very best success in these critical endeavours.

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