• Energy Research
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AbstractGlobal threats such as climate change, population growth, and rapid urbanization pose a huge future challenge to water management, and, to ensure the ongoing reliability, resilience and sustainability of service provision, a paradigm shift is required. This paper presents an overarching framework that supports the development of strategies for reliable provision of services while explicitly addressing the need for greater resilience to emerging threats, leading to more sustainable solutions. The framework logically relates global threats, the water system (in its broadest sense), impacts on system performance, and social, economic, and environmental consequences. It identifies multiple opportunities for intervention, illustrating how mitigation, adaptation, coping, and learning each address different elements of the framework. This provides greater clarity to decision makers and will enable better informed choices to be made. The framework facilitates four types of analysis and evaluation to support the development of reliable, resilient, and sustainable solutions: “top‐down,” “bottom‐up,” “middle based,” and “circular” and provides a clear, visual representation of how/when each may be used. In particular, the potential benefits of a middle‐based analysis, which focuses on system failure modes and their impacts and enables the effects of unknown threats to be accounted for, are highlighted. The disparate themes of reliability, resilience and sustainability are also logically integrated and their relationships explored in terms of properties and performance. Although these latter two terms are often conflated in resilience and sustainability metrics, the argument is made in this work that the performance of a reliable, resilient, or sustainable system must be distinguished from the properties that enable this performance to be achieved.

AbstractGlobal threats such as climate change, population growth, and rapid urbanization pose a huge future challenge to water management, and, to ensure the ongoing reliability, resilience and sustainability of service provision, a paradigm shift is required. This paper presents an overarching framework that supports the development of strategies for reliable provision of services while explicitly addressing the need for greater resilience to emerging threats, leading to more sustainable solutions. The framework logically relates global threats, the water system (in its broadest sense), impacts on system performance, and social, economic, and environmental consequences. It identifies multiple opportunities for intervention, illustrating how mitigation, adaptation, coping, and learning each address different elements of the framework. This provides greater clarity to decision makers and will enable better informed choices to be made. The framework facilitates four types of analysis and evaluation to support the development of reliable, resilient, and sustainable solutions: “top‐down,” “bottom‐up,” “middle based,” and “circular” and provides a clear, visual representation of how/when each may be used. In particular, the potential benefits of a middle‐based analysis, which focuses on system failure modes and their impacts and enables the effects of unknown threats to be accounted for, are highlighted. The disparate themes of reliability, resilience and sustainability are also logically integrated and their relationships explored in terms of properties and performance. Although these latter two terms are often conflated in resilience and sustainability metrics, the argument is made in this work that the performance of a reliable, resilient, or sustainable system must be distinguished from the properties that enable this performance to be achieved.

AbstractHere, the evolution of the titanocene‐catalyzed hydrosilylation of epoxides that yields the corresponding anti‐Markovnikov alcohols is summarized. The study focuses on aspects of sustainability, efficient catalyst activation, and stereoselectivity. The latest variant of the reaction employs polymethylhydrosiloxane (PMHS), a waste product of the Müller–Rochow process as terminal reductant, features an efficient catalyst activation with benzylMgBr and the use of the bench stable Cp2TiCl2 as precatalyst. The combination of olefin epoxidation and epoxide hydrosilylation provides a uniquely efficient approach to the formal anti‐Markovnikov addition of H2O to olefins.

AbstractHere, the evolution of the titanocene‐catalyzed hydrosilylation of epoxides that yields the corresponding anti‐Markovnikov alcohols is summarized. The study focuses on aspects of sustainability, efficient catalyst activation, and stereoselectivity. The latest variant of the reaction employs polymethylhydrosiloxane (PMHS), a waste product of the Müller–Rochow process as terminal reductant, features an efficient catalyst activation with benzylMgBr and the use of the bench stable Cp2TiCl2 as precatalyst. The combination of olefin epoxidation and epoxide hydrosilylation provides a uniquely efficient approach to the formal anti‐Markovnikov addition of H2O to olefins.

AbstractAs countries worldwide race toward a green transition, the demand for electric vehicles is surging, and with it comes a growing need for batteries. However, the push for increased domestic mining to secure these materials raises significant concerns about environmental sustainability. Even with stringent regulations, the environmental impact of mining can be profound, posing risks such as biodiversity loss, water pollution, and broader ecological damage. Furthermore, geopolitical tensions could arise as countries whose economic interests are threatened by these initiatives may react adversely. Local communities might also resist mining projects due to concerns over environmental degradation, health risks, and disruptions to their livelihoods. Given the critical importance of metals in the ecological transition, this challenge must be approached with the same urgency and global coordination as a pandemic response. Just as the world mobilized unprecedented resources to tackle COVID‐19, a similarly robust approach is necessary to ensure the availability of critical metals for a sustainable future. This paper suggests potential pathways for academic, technological, and societal advancements within the framework of a circular economy for lithium, aiming to secure a sustainable supply of this essential resource.

AbstractAs countries worldwide race toward a green transition, the demand for electric vehicles is surging, and with it comes a growing need for batteries. However, the push for increased domestic mining to secure these materials raises significant concerns about environmental sustainability. Even with stringent regulations, the environmental impact of mining can be profound, posing risks such as biodiversity loss, water pollution, and broader ecological damage. Furthermore, geopolitical tensions could arise as countries whose economic interests are threatened by these initiatives may react adversely. Local communities might also resist mining projects due to concerns over environmental degradation, health risks, and disruptions to their livelihoods. Given the critical importance of metals in the ecological transition, this challenge must be approached with the same urgency and global coordination as a pandemic response. Just as the world mobilized unprecedented resources to tackle COVID‐19, a similarly robust approach is necessary to ensure the availability of critical metals for a sustainable future. This paper suggests potential pathways for academic, technological, and societal advancements within the framework of a circular economy for lithium, aiming to secure a sustainable supply of this essential resource.