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With the 2015 Paris Agreement pursuing efforts to limit global temperature increase to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and the “energy trilemma” goals of energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability, decarbonisation remains a priority across all of the United Kingdom (United Kingdom) energy system, not just electricity. Electricity and thermal energy storage technologies can offer a host of benefits across the energy value chain through the abilityS to capture, store and then release electricity or thermal energy over a period of time. These benefits include helping capture the full potential of renewable generation and providing services such as frequency response and reserve to Great Britain’s (GB) electricity system. In addition, with the aforementioned climate targets in mind, energy storage can also play a role in facilitating the decarbonisation of other activities and sectors. Here we delve deeper into how energy storage technologies can contribute to both energy sector transformation and more broadly, decarbonisation. Furthermore, we discuss the importance of ensuring a technology-agnostic approach to the development of policy and regulation with relevance to energy storage. This ensures that storage technologies with significant potential to contribute to the ‘energy trilemma’ goals are not precluded from entering the market due to unfavourable policy and regulatory frameworks.

AbstractThis work reports the synthesis, characterization, photophysical, and photovoltaic properties of five new thieno[3,2‐b][1]benzothiophene isoindigo (TBTI)‐containing low bandgap donor–acceptor conjugated polymers with a series of comonomers and different side chains. When TBTI is combined with different electron‐rich moieties, even small structural variations can have significant impact on thin film morphology of the polymer:phenyl C70 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) blends. More importantly, high‐resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy is used to investigate the phase‐separated bulk heterojunction domains, which can be accurately and precisely resolved, enabling an enhanced correlation between polymer chemical structure, photovoltaic device performance, and morphology.

With the continuous development of intelligent transportation technologies, new ways of energy usage in transportation continue to emerge, which puts forward new requirements for the planning and design of energy systems. However, comprehensive analyses on the characteristics of transportation energy systems and the development trend of energy usage patterns brought by intelligent technologies have rarely been carried out so far. This paper explores this subject by reviewing the recent development and utilization of intelligent technologies in the transportation system and its impacts on energy usage. This review is carried out from three aspects, covering the representative intelligent transportation and energy technologies on vehicles, infrastructures and systems. The scope is limited within road, railway and water transport domains, with a focus on the recent developments in China as a representative. In terms of vehicles, the development trend of the power systems for new energy vehicles, the characteristics of energy usages in electric vehicles and the effects on energy saving and emission reduction are summarized. In terms of infrastructures, new technologies on smart road, smart port, intelligent railway energy system and the usage of clear energy on electric grid for transportation are reviewed, with the consideration of their potential influences on energy usages and the energy consumption characteristics of typical facilities also being analyzed. As for the transportation system, this review has focused on intelligent and connected transportation systems, train control and autonomous systems, and intelligent shipping system, with the emphasis on the energy saving and emission reduction effects of applying these intelligent technologies. The overall development trend of the transportation energy system is then analyzed based on the above materials, in particular, the future energy usage patterns in transportation system are given and the major challenges and obstacles approaching the future scenarios are also identified.

AbstractSolar fuels offer a promising approach to provide sustainable fuels by harnessing sunlight1,2. Following a decade of advancement, Cu2O photocathodes are capable of delivering a performance comparable to that of photoelectrodes with established photovoltaic materials3–5. However, considerable bulk charge carrier recombination that is poorly understood still limits further advances in performance6. Here we demonstrate performance of Cu2O photocathodes beyond the state-of-the-art by exploiting a new conceptual understanding of carrier recombination and transport in single-crystal Cu2O thin films. Using ambient liquid-phase epitaxy, we present a new method to grow single-crystal Cu2O samples with three crystal orientations. Broadband femtosecond transient reflection spectroscopy measurements were used to quantify anisotropic optoelectronic properties, through which the carrier mobility along the [111] direction was found to be an order of magnitude higher than those along other orientations. Driven by these findings, we developed a polycrystalline Cu2O photocathode with an extraordinarily pure (111) orientation and (111) terminating facets using a simple and low-cost method, which delivers 7 mA cm−2 current density (more than 70% improvement compared to that of state-of-the-art electrodeposited devices) at 0.5 V versus a reversible hydrogen electrode under air mass 1.5 G illumination, and stable operation over at least 120 h.

The decarbonization of transport and heating will introduce uncertain smart appliance growth in the power system, which fundamentally challenges traditional network pricing. In this paper, a new long-term distribution network charging is proposed to accommodate uncertain load growth. Instead of using fixed a load growth rate (LGR), it adopts a fuzzy model, developed based on a set of projected deterministic LGRs and confidence levels. This fuzzy model is incorporated into the pricing model through $ {\alpha } $ -cut intervals. In order to improve computational efficiency, an analytical pricing approach is introduced. The vertex extension approach is used to build charge membership functions. Thereafter, a common defuzzification approach, center of gravity, is employed to defuzzify membership functions in order to generate deterministic charges. The new approach is benchmarked with two existing standard charging methods on a practical U.K. high-voltage distribution system. Results show that it is effective in capturing the uncertainty in load growth.

A variety of pipelines are distributed under urban roads. The upgrading of pipelines is bound to occupy certain road resources, compress the driving space of motor vehicles for a long time, aggravate the traffic congestion in the construction section, and then affect the traffic operation of the whole region. A reasonable layout of traffic signs for inducement to guide the traffic flow in the area where the construction section is located is conducive to promoting a balanced distribution of traffic flow in the regional road network, so as to achieve the reduction of automobile exhaust emissions and the sustainable development of traffic. In this paper, the layout optimization method of regional traffic signs for inducement is proposed. Taking the maximum amount of guidance information that the regional traffic signs can provide as the objective function, and taking the traffic volume, the characteristics of intersection nodes and the standard deviation of road saturation as the independent variables, the layout optimization model of guidance facilities is constructed, which can optimize the layout of traffic guidance signs in the area affected by the construction section, and achieve the goal that the minimum number of facilities can provide the maximum amount of guidance information. The results of the case study show that among the 64 alternative locations where traffic guidance signs can be set in the study area, eight optimal locations are finally determined as the setting points of guidance facilities through this model, and the effective increment of guidance information is the largest at this time. The model proposed in this paper can be used for reference to promote the sustainable development of traffic in the area where the construction section is located.

China is confronted with an unprecedented water crisis regarding its quantity and quality. In this study, we quantified the dynamics of China?s embodied water use and chemical oxygen demand (COD) discharge from 2010 to 2015. The analysis was conducted with the latest available water use data across sectors in primary, secondary and tertiary industries and input?output models. The results showed that (1) China?s water crisis was alleviated under urbanisation. Urban consumption occupied the largest percentages (over 30%) of embodied water use and COD discharge, but embodied water intensities in urban consumption were far lower than those in rural consumption. (2) The ?new normal? phase witnessed the optimisation of China?s water use structures. Embodied water use in light-manufacturing and tertiary sectors increased while those in heavy-manufacturing sectors (except chemicals and transport equipment) dropped. (3) Transformation of China?s international market brought positive effects on its domestic water use. China?s water use (116?80 billion tonnes (Bts))(9) and COD discharge (3.95?2.22 million tonnes (Mts)) embodied in export tremendously decreased while its total export values (11?25 trillion CNY) soared. Furthermore, embodied water use and COD discharge in relatively low-end sectors, such as textile, started to transfer from international to domestic markets when a part of China?s production activities had been relocated to other developing countries.

Small band gap molecular semiconductors are of interest for the development of transparent electronics. Here we report two near-infrared (NIR), n-type small molecule semiconductors, based upon an acceptor-donor-acceptor (A-D-A) approach. We show that the inclusion of molecular spacers between the strong-electron-accepting end group, 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole-4,5,6-tricarbonitrile, and the donor core affords semiconductors with very low band gaps down to 1 eV. Both materials were synthesized by a one-pot, 6-fold nucleophilic displacement of a fluorinated precursor by cyanide. Significant differences in solid-state ordering and charge carrier mobility are observed depending on the nature of the spacer, with a thiophene spacer resulting in solution processed organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) exhibiting excellent electron mobility up to 1.1 cm2 V-1 s-1. The use of silver nanowires as the gate electrode enables the fabrication of a semitransparent OFET device with an average visible transmission of 71% in the optical spectrum. ; The authors thank the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/L016702/1 and EP/T028513/1), Global Research Laboratory Program of the National Research Foundation (NRF-2017K1A1A2013153), the Royal Society, and the Wolfson Foundation (Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship) for funding. M.I.N., M.H., and T.D.A. acknowledge funding from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under Award Nos. OSR-2018-CARF/CCF-3079 and OSR-2020-CRG8-4095. F.E. thanks EPSRC for support via a Doctoral Prize Fellowship.