Download : Download high-res image (324KB) Download : Download full-size image Yahong Zhou is an assistant Professor at TIPC. She received her bachelor’s degree from Jilin University in 2009 and PhD from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2014 under the supervision of Prof. Lei Jiang. Her research interest mainly focuses on the nanoporous membrane and integrated as-prepared

Sevcan Erşan is a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA. Previously, she conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Hohenheim in Germany. She received her PhD in biotechnology from Yeditepe University, Turkey, and her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in food engineering from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. She is experienced in waste utilization, bioprocessing technologies, and biological

Adam J. Rieth is a postdoctoral scholar in the Nocera group at Harvard University. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in his hometown. He then earned his Ph.D. in the laboratory of Prof. Mircea Dincă at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he designed metal-organic frameworks for water harvesting. For the past year in the Nocera group

Wilm Jones received his PhD from Cardiff University; his research concerned photocatalytic hydrogen production using supported gold and gold alloy nanoparticles. He then worked at the UK Catalysis Hub on CO2 hydrogenation, followed by a research fellowship at the University of Aberdeen, working on photocatalytic NADH regeneration. Currently Wilm works as a research associate for UCL at the Research

Wolf-Peter Schill is Deputy Head of the Energy, Transportation, Environment Department at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), where he leads the research area Transformation of the Energy Economy. He engages in open-source power sector modeling, which he applies to economic analyses of renewable energy integration, energy storage, and sector coupling. He holds a diploma in environmental

Download : Download high-res image (424KB) Download : Download full-size imageChristopher Howe is Professor of Plant and Microbial Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1983 for work on the chloroplast genome of wheat. His lab continues to study chloroplast genomes, especially those of unicellular eukaryotes, but also works on photosynthetic

Recently in Cell, researchers in James Liao’s group were able for the first time to engineer E. coli so that it can robustly grow on methanol, which potentially enables the industrial bioproduction of higher value chemicals while using methanol as a substrate.

Electrogenic microbes utilize anodes as metabolic electron acceptors producing electrical current. Recently, Beuth et al. reported that, when grown on copper anodes in the presence of sulfate, they can induce the precipitation of copper sulfide, which becomes incorporated into the growing biofilms, increasing their conductivity and net electrical output. This biogenic biofilm “doping” presents a new

The natural world blends microenvironments to create a continuum of spatial niches wherein microbial consortia participate in metabolic exchanges. The capability with which nature selects a consortium to complement a given niche is often taken for granted. Not by Shahab et al. (2020), however, who created a synthetic microbial consortium to mediate a multi-step bioprocess in a single bioreactor system

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is one of the most mature negative emissions technologies. Implementing it at scale may be needed to meet end-of-century climate targets. Recently in Nature Climate Change, Hanssen and co-authors evaluate the energy and sequestration potential of BECCS through 2100. Their findings further support that substantial emissions mitigation is, at least biophysically

Microbial electrosynthesis is increasingly popular, as it couples renewable electricity to microbial metabolism. Currently, electromicrobial production (EMP) to synthesize fuels has yet to surpass laboratory-scale reactions, but continuing improvements in the cost efficiency of these technologies hold promise for their translation to the real world. In this issue of Joule, Barstow and coworkers introduce

The light-driven oxidation of water to oxygen characteristic of oxygenic photosynthesis is catalyzed by a redox-active manganese/calcium cluster embedded in the Photosystem II (PSII) complex. How the cluster is assembled during the biogenesis and repair of PSII is unclear. Cryo-electron microscopy data have now provided new insights into the structure of a PSII complex lacking the cluster and have

In this issue of Joule, the study by Lu et al. on spontaneous solar syngas production from CO2 driven by energetically favorable wastewater microbial anodes demonstrated a microbial photoelectrochemical system that combines oxidation of organic wastes in wastewater with photocathodic CO2 reduction reaction. Spontaneous CO2 reduction using the energy stored from sunlight and microorganisms incites the

The low environmental impact of electricity generation using solar cells crucially depends on high energy-conversion efficiencies, long lifetimes, and a minimal energy and material demand during production. Emerging thin-film photovoltaics such as perovskites on plastic substrates could hold promises to fulfill all these requirements. Under real-world operating conditions, photovoltaic operation is

Download : Download high-res image (171KB) Download : Download full-size imageWanghuai Xu is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the City University of Hong Kong and the Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, at University of Science and Technology of China. His research interest focuses on water-based energy harvesting, electrical

Accelerating innovation in low-carbon technologies is fundamental in order to achieve global climate targets. However, only few technologies are currently on track to meet these targets. Here, we review and synthesize the innovation literature to develop a technology typology that helps explain systematic differences in technologies’ experience rates. Based on the typology, we derive implications for

The fast progress of perovskite-based tandem photovoltaic technology raises the need to identify optimal double-junction tandem architectures with regard to energy yield (EY) under realistic irradiation conditions. Recently, the three-terminal (3T) perovskite-silicon tandem architecture was prototyped for the first time. This technology bears great promise as it combines the advantages of two-terminal

Download : Download high-res image (329KB) Download : Download full-size imageAlex Gilbert is a Project Manager at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, where he oversees technical and regulatory work on commercializing advanced reactors. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Payne Institute, where he conducts research on energy markets, climate policy, and outer space resources governance, and Adjunct

Ulrich Gallersdörfer is a research associate in the Department of Informatics at the Technical University of Munich. His research focuses on identity management in blockchains. His interest extends to further aspects of the technology, ranging from environmental implications to data analytics applications. Lena Klaaßen is a graduate student at TUM School of Management at the Technical University of

Download : Download high-res image (85KB) Download : Download full-size imageDongliang Chao obtained his PhD from Nanyang Technological University (NTU, Singapore). He joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA, USA) in 2016 as a joint researcher. He is currently an ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Adelaide (UoA, Australia), working on electrochemical mechanism and practical application

Jun Yin obtained his PhD from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) in 2016, after which he worked in the University of Manchester as a research associate for 3 years. Then, he joined NUAA in 2019 as a professor. His research focuses on surface/interface interaction of nanomaterials and their applications. Jianxin Zhou is an associate professor of mechanics at NUAA. He obtained

Oftentimes, advanced microscopy studies that measure the local performance of energy materials are restricted to probing the surface. Yet, it is recognized that critical operational processes occur within these devices. In Nature Communications, Song et al. dig deeper by implementing tomographic atomic force microscopy to study local electrical transport pathways in a thin-film halide perovskite. From

Recently in Joule, Gilbert and Bazilian argue that nuclear microreactors could be developed to provide a commercially viable source of distributed electricity generation. While microreactors are technically feasible to construct, the options for providing the same energy services using lower-cost renewables and storage brings into question the necessity of developing a nuclear option.

Steel is one of the most prevalent construction materials—its production is also one of the largest sources of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Existing technology to decarbonize the steel sector is costly and unlikely to be commercially competitive without policy intervention. Recently in Climate Policy, Vogl and co-authors critically discuss how existing supply- and demand-side policy instruments

Li et al. present a worldwide analysis of rare-earth elements used in wind turbine generators. It focuses on the most extreme deployment scenario using rare-earth-intensive generator technology to demonstrate demand quickly outpacing supply, thus suggesting an existential threat to rapid wind deployment. However, alternative generator technologies exist or are in development that significantly reduce

John Deutch is an emeritus Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he has been a member of the faculty since 1970. He has served as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, Dean of Science, and Provost. In the Carter Administration, he served as Director of Energy Research (1977–1979), Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Technology (1979), and Undersecretary (1979–1980)

Download : Download high-res image (193KB) Download : Download full-size imageBrandon J. Hopkins is a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) focused on advancing next-generation electrochemical energy systems. Hopkins received his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he worked on aqueous metal–air batteries. As a master’s candidate

The rapid rise in efficiencies of lead halide perovskite solar cells has hastened the case for commercialization. One of the key barriers, however, is stability of devices. In this issue of Joule, Zhou et al. studied the degradation mechanism of a FA-Cs mixed cation perovskite-based solar cell with experimental and modeling techniques to show that phase separation into FA-rich and Cs-rich compositions