Cutting carbon: energy and climate

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1. 1

   A city-scale optimization framework for biomass-to-clean-energy transitions: The KAMPALA-TIMES model.

   iScience (Kimuli et al.)Published May 22, 2026Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “This study develops the KAMPALA-TIMES model, a city-scale, bottom-up optimization framework that integrates localized energy data with IPCC AR6 SSP-RCP pathways to evaluate long-term energy transition strategies for Kampala, Uganda, from 2022 to 2060. Four scenarios (business-as-usual, enhanced biomass utilization, mixed renewable integration, and policy-driven carbon reduction) are assessed. Results show that efficiency improvements alone stabilize emissions but do not significantly reduce them, whereas electrification combined with renewable expansion substantially lowers system emissions. The policy-driven carbon reduction pathway achieves the deepest mitigation, reducing emissions to approximately 3.4 MtCO2e by 2060 and nearly eliminating household cooking emissions by 2040. These findings demonstrate that coordinated fuel substitution, infrastructure investment, and policy alignment are critical for urban decarbonization and provide a transferable framework for energy planning in rapidly growing, data-constrained cities.”

2. 2

   Navigating regional zero-carbon steel pathways in China by aligning spatial resource constraints with facility heterogeneity.

   Nature communications (Yan et al.)Published Aug 21, 2026Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “Here we develop a plant-resolved, spatially explicit framework that integrates a facility-level emission database, a cost-minimizing technology model and geospatial resource matching. We find that blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace production accounts for 83% of sectoral emissions, while 35% of blast furnaces are 10-15 years old, creating retrofit opportunities and carbon lock-in risks. Achieving a 97% emissions reduction by 2060 requires accelerated retrofits before 2040, retirement of 140 small facilities, expansion of hydrogen metallurgy to 34.6%, and a limited role for carbon capture and storage at 12.1%. Relative to business as usual, the near-zero pathway cuts cumulative system costs by 2,184 billion United States dollars (USD) by 2060 despite USD 436 billion in stranded assets. Northern and coastal regions favour hydrogen metallurgy, whereas inland provinces concentrate 46% of national carbon capture capacity. This study highlights differentiated regional pathway for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors under technological lock-in and uneven resource endowments.”

3. 3

   Rethinking chemical clusters: Greenfield and brownfield transition to net-zero by 2050.

   iScience (Tiggeloven et al.)Published Sep 5, 2026Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “We develop a cluster-level optimization framework to design brownfield transition pathways toward net-zero chemical clusters by 2050, applied to existing ammonia-olefin clusters in the Netherlands. The model represents sequential investment decisions for 2030, 2040, and 2050, includes scope 1-3 emissions, and enables a systematic comparison of greenfield and brownfield configurations. Thirteen olefin and eight ammonia production routes are considered. The results show that, despite reduced flexibility due to legacy assets, net-zero brownfield configurations remain feasible. Plastic gasification combined with methanol-to-olefins emerges as a low-regret option for olefins, while electric steam methane reforming and electrolyzers are robust choices for ammonia. The results support early investment rather than strategic delay. Excluding scope 3 emissions leads to lock-in of fossil-based options that appear cost-effective short-term but raise long-term system costs. Sensitivity analyses highlight uncertainties related to infrastructure and technology availability, bio-feedstock prices, and plastic waste emission accounting.”

4. 4

   A multilayered framework for advancing rapid and cost-effective electric power system decarbonization.

   PNAS nexus (Shi et al.)Published Apr 24, 2026Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “Yet current approaches often address policy, markets, technology, and consumer behavior in isolation, making it difficult to design coherent and adaptive decarbonization pathways across stakeholders. To address this gap, we propose a three-layer, feedback-oriented framework for balanced power-system decarbonization. The framework explicitly links: (i) carbon accountability and policy design (layer 1), (ii) carbon-electricity market integration (layer 2), and (iii) data-driven carbon visibility and consumer engagement (layer 3). Unlike prior work, which typically examines these domains separately, our contribution is in organizing them into a unified architecture with bidirectional feedback channels that together form a closed-loop decarbonization governance structure, so that policy, market signals, operational performance, and consumer behavior can dynamically inform one another. By clarifying the interdependencies across layers, defining essential versus complementary research areas, and demonstrating how the framework may be implemented modularly, this perspective provides a structured research agenda for rapid, resilient, and socially equitable power-system decarbonization.”

5. 5

   Techno-economic analysis of a power-to-hydrogen system in heavy industries with and without national incentives.

   PloS one (Marouani et al.)Published May 18, 2026Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “It demonstrates a linear relationship between total capital investment and LCOH (R² > 0.96), enabling rapid cost estimation without full simulations. It identifies a critical threshold for battery storage cost reduction (≥50%) before batteries become economically viable in PtH systems without incentives. It also provides a comparative analysis of incentive effects versus projected equipment cost reductions (2030-2050), showing that incentives alone can achieve 43-54% LCOH reductions. In addition, this formulated control strategy aims to accomplish three main objectives such as satisfying hourly hydrogen demand, maximizing renewable electricity utilization, and minimizing grid electricity withdrawal. The economic effect of these incentives closely rivals anticipated declines in equipment expenses projected for the coming decade. Furthermore, the observed linear relationship between capital investment and LCOH enables precise cost modelling and streamlines decision-making for site-specific implementations, minimizing the need for additional simulations.”

6. 6

   Unleashing the combined potential of bio-based carbon dioxide removal in Germany's path to net zero from the bioenergy system perspective.

   iScience (Sadr et al.)Published Aug 6, 2026Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is an essential measure for achieving national and international climate targets, complementing emission reductions. Germany aims for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 and net-negative emissions thereafter. Nonetheless, current deployment levels are still a far cry from what is needed. This study employs a comprehensive modeling approach to examine the regional deployment of bio-based CDR in Germany, integrating techno-economic and regional conditions. We focus on two key CDR approaches: technical and natural sinks, thereby coupling energy and non-energy sectors and providing a cross-sectoral view. The selected CDR concepts are implemented in the extended bioenergy optimization model (BENOPTex) to assess their deployment for achieving climate targets cost-effectively in Germany. Our analysis demonstrates that a co-deployment strategy of technical and natural sinks, as opposed to deploying solely technical sinks, can enhance overall CDR potential by at least 50% while cutting removal costs, achieving around ∼110 Mt CO2 removal annually by 2050.”

7. 7

   Climate change mitigation (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaPublished Oct 4, 2026Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “Climate change mitigation, also called decarbonisation, is an action to limit the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause climate change. Climate change mitigation actions include conserving energy and replacing fossil fuels with clean energy sources. Secondary mitigation strategies include changes to land use and removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. 2022 assessments emphasize that global greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 and decline by about 43% by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 °C, requiring rapid transitions in energy, transport, and land-use systems. The adopted climate change mitigation policies are insufficient, as they contribute to some changes but fail to accelerate transitions at the scale and speed required, and would still result in global warming of about 2.7 °C by 2100, significantly above the 2015 Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to below 2 °C.”

8. 8

   A review of electro-hydrogen synergistic systems: from key material breakthroughs, multi-timescale control to full-chain integration.

   RSC advances (Wang et al.)Published Jul 13, 2026Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “First, recent advances and critical challenges in water electrolysis technologies, including PEM, ALK, AEM, and SOEC, are reviewed in terms of catalyst materials, membrane electrode structures, stack-level in situ diagnostics, and durability under fluctuating operating conditions. Second, high-pressure gaseous, cryogenic liquid, and solid-state hydrogen storage pathways are comparatively assessed, revealing trade-offs among energy density, efficiency loss, safety, cost, and infrastructure compatibility. Third, the review summarizes coupling architectures for electricity-hydrogen-heat-gas multi-energy systems, as well as dynamic response control and multi-timescale optimal scheduling from microgrids and industrial parks to regional integrated energy systems. Finally, the application potential of electro-hydrogen synergetic systems in renewable energy consumption, grid ancillary services, and industrial decarbonization is discussed, and key scientific questions and suggestions for large-scale demonstration and commercialization are proposed.”

9. 9

   Strategic timing for the decarbonization contributions by China's photovoltaic manufacturers in global energy transition.

   Nature communications (Lin et al.)Published Aug 6, 2026Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “However, China's PV manufacturing industry, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of global capacity, is often criticized for its high carbon emissions. Existing studies typically assign emission responsibility to manufacturers while attributing decarbonization benefits to power generation, overlooking upstream producers' contributions. Here we propose a Producer Decarbonization Contribution framework to quantify these long-overlooked contributions at national and global scales. We show that China's PV manufacturers contribute 31.4%-73.8% of total PV decarbonization in China and 27.9%-45.4% globally. We further identify a strategic timing, defined as the point at which the PV's decarbonization contributions reach their maximum, occurring around 2035 in China under the Announced Pledges Scenario and 2030 globally under the Net Zero Emissions Scenario proposed by the International Energy Agency. These findings suggest maintaining supportive policies for China before 2035, while adopting more stringent measures globally after 2030 to avoid overproduction. The proposed framework that enables adaptive industrial policy design can be extended to other renewable energy technologies.”

10. 10

    Adaptive quantum inspired deep reinforcement learning for multi objective low carbon CCHP optimization.

    Scientific reports (Rehman et al.)Published Jun 10, 2026Checked Oct 4, 2026

    “A novel Carbon-Conscious Optimal Power Flow (C-OPF) model tracks carbon flows across multi-stage energy conversion pathways. Extensive simulations conducted under summer and winter operating conditions demonstrate that the proposed AQ-DRLMO framework achieves greenhouse gas emission reduction of 40.08%, primary energy saving of 34.04%, and cost reduction of 24.44% compared to conventional individual generation systems across different control strategies and seasonal scenarios. The quantum-inspired optimization achieves 67.3% faster convergence compared to conventional genetic algorithms while maintaining solution diversity in the Pareto front, converging in 45 iterations versus 137 iterations for standard genetic algorithms under identical test conditions. This study relies on synthetic load profiles and simulation-generated validation data; therefore, the findings are best interpreted as a simulation-based demonstration of day-ahead scheduling potential rather than a validated real-time control solution. Subject to field validation, the framework shows promise as an efficient solution for smart grid energy management in low-carbon distributed energy systems.”

11. 11

    Low-carbon economy (Wikipedia)

    WikipediaPublished Sep 30, 2026Checked Sep 30, 2026

    “A low-carbon economy is an economy which absorbs as much greenhouse gas as it emits. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to human activity are the dominant cause of observed climate change since the mid-20th century. There are many proven approaches for moving to a low-carbon economy, such as encouraging renewable energy transition, energy conservation, and electrification of transportation (e.g. electric vehicles). An example are zero-carbon cities. Shifting from high-carbon economies to low-carbon economies on a global scale could bring substantial benefits for all countries. It would also contribute to climate change mitigation.”