EES Blog

We are delighted to announce that Professor Xiaojing Hao (University of New South Wales, Australia) has joined the Energy & Environmental Science Editorial Board.

Prof Xiaojing Hao obtained her PhD in the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering of UNSW in 2010. She has focused her research on low-cost, high-efficiency thin film solar cells and tandem solar cells since her PhD. Her research interests include the design, synthesis and optimization of light harvesting materials, and associated optoelectronic devices for both solar PV and solar fuel applications.

Prof Hao has attracted >$46 million research grants since 2011, published >200 peer-reviewed journal papers, including publications in Nature Energy, Nature Photonics and Energy & Environmental Science with several fellowships and awards for her research excellence, including 2020 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science: Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year, and 2021 Australian Academy of Science Pawsey Medal.

Please join us in welcoming Xiaojing to the Editorial Board!

In celebration of International Women’s Day 2024, the RSC’s Energy journals are delighted to celebrate some of the amazing women in energy with an article collection highlighting recent work led by women around the world, published in our energy journal portfolio.

Read the collection

We welcome any women corresponding or first authors who have published work in the above energy journals in 2023 to get in touch and have their work featured in the collection. Thank you to all contributors and we hope that you enjoy reading the collection.

We are delighted to announce that the 2023 EES Lectureship has been jointly awarded to Dr Hanna Breunig and Prof Dongliang Chao.

Established in 2012, the Lectureship recognises outstanding emerging investigators working in an energy research topic within the scope of Energy & Environmental Science, providing a platform to showcase their research to the wider scientific community. The EES Lectureship is awarded annually through a process whereby nominations of candidates are invited from our fantastic community.

Hanna Breunig is a Research Scientist and Deputy-Head of the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Systems Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her group focuses on process design, modelling, and systems analysis of low Technology Readiness Level energy systems including hydrogen, energy storage, and negative emissions technologies.

Since 2022, Hanna has acted as co-Director of the multi-lab United States Department of Energy Hydrogen Materials Advanced Research Consortium (HyMARC), where she works closely with teams conducting material discovery and characterization to accelerate the selection and development of material-based storage solutions that can compliment or outcompete compressed and liquid hydrogen storage. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in Civil and Environmental Engineering (2015).

Read Hanna’s recent work in the journal:

Green steel: design and cost analysis of hydrogen-based direct iron reduction

Emerging concepts in intermediate carbon dioxide emplacement to support carbon dioxide removal

Technoeconomic analysis of metal–organic frameworks for bulk hydrogen transportation

Dongliang Chao is an Executive Director of the Centre for Aqueous Battery at Fudan University. Prof. 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. Dr Chao served as Research Fellow and senior researcher respectively, at NTU and The University of Adelaide (UoA, Australia).

Prof. Chao’s main research activity is high-energy aqueous batteries. He has published 1 authored book and >150 journal articles; 1/3 of them are ESI H.C. papers, with an H-index of 70 and citations over 22,000. His awards include Innovators Under 35 (MIT Technology Review), Shanghai S&T 35, Rising Star Australia, DECRA Fellow Award (Australian Research Council), and Global Highly Cited Researcher (2020–2023, Clarivate).

Read Dongliang’s recent work in the journal:

The origin of capacity fluctuation and rescue of dead Mn-based Zn–ion batteries: a Mn-based competitive capacity evolution protocol

Advanced in situ technology for Li/Na metal anodes: an in-depth mechanistic understanding

A scalable top-down strategy toward practical metrics of Ni–Zn aqueous batteries with total energy densities of 165 W h kg⁻¹ and 506 W h L⁻¹

The winners will each receive a £500 honorarium and will be given the opportunity to attend and present their research at a leading international conference. Nominations for the 2024 EES Lectureship will open later this year, and you can find out more about the EES Lectureship award and criteria on our website.

Many congratulations to our winners, and we hope that you enjoy reading their work.

This year, we plan to celebrate some of the amazing women in energy with an article collection highlighting recent work led by women around the world, published in our energy journal portfolio. This collection will showcase the impact these leading individuals have on their fields. 

If you have published in any of the journals below in 2023, and either the first and/or corresponding author of the article is a woman, your article can feature in our 2024 collection!

If you are interested, please email EES-rsc@rsc.org with the title of your article, DOI, and the journal in which your article is featured by the 29th of February 2024. The collection will be promoted this International Women’s Day, 8 March 2024. At the Royal Society of Chemistry, we foster a culture of inclusion of women from all walks of life and look forward to continuing to celebrate the wonderful women in energy science.

If you have any colleagues who may have published in any of these journals in 2023 and would be suitable to feature in the collection, please do let us know.

Energy & Environmental Science is proud to publish research that tackles the key global and societal challenges of ensuring the provision of energy and protecting our environment for the future. In an era defined by the pressing need for sustainable energy solutions, the intersection of energy policy and techno-economics holds paramount significance.

This collection showcases a selection of impactful work published in EES in the field of, or relating to, energy policy and techno-economic analysis. We hope the articles highlighted in this collection emphasize the need for an integrated approach to tackle the energy and environmental challenges of our time and provide valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and industry experts striving for a sustainable energy future.

Read the collection

If you’re working at the forefront of this research area, we welcome you to submit your next paper to Energy & Environmental Science.

We are delighted to introduce the newest member of the Energy & Environmental Science Editorial Board, Professor Kazunari Domen.

Kazunari Domen is a University Professor at the University of Tokyo and a Special Contract Professor at the Research Initiative for Supra-Material (RISM), Shinshu University, Japan.

Professor Domen received his B.S. (1976), M.S. (1979), and Ph.D. (1982) honors in Chemistry from the University of Tokyo. He then joined the Chemical Resources Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1982 as an Assistant Professor and was subsequently promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and Professor in 1996. He moved to the University of Tokyo as a Professor in 2004 and was cross appointed by Shinshu University as a Special Contract Professor in 2017. He became a University Professor at the University of Tokyo in 2019.

His research interests include heterogeneous catalysis and materials chemistry, with a particular focus on surface chemical reaction dynamics, photocatalysis, solid acid catalysis, and mesoporous materials. Recently, his effort is focused on the development of photocatalysts for water splitting and the construction of practical solar hydrogen production systems.

Read some of Kazunari’s recent work in EES:

Design of semitransparent tantalum nitride photoanode for efficient and durable solar water splitting

Ta₃N₅-Nanorods enabling highly efficient water oxidation via advantageous light harvesting and charge collection

Probing fundamental losses in nanostructured Ta₃N₅ photoanodes: design principles for efficient water oxidation

Please join us in welcoming Professor Kazunari Domen to the Energy & Environmental Science Editorial Board!

We are delighted to introduce our five new members of the Energy & Environmental Science Editorial Board. We would like to extend a warm welcome to Christoph Brabec, William Chueh, Jan Rossmeisl, Jennifer Wilcox, and Karen Wilson.

Christoph Brabec is a Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and Director at the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg (HI-ErN), FZJ. His research interests include all aspects of solution processing organic, hybrid and inorganic semiconductor devices with a strong focus on photovoltaics and renewable energy systems.

Read some of Christoph’s work in EES: A top-down strategy identifying molecular phase stabilizers to overcome microstructure instabilities in organic solar cells

William Chueh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and in the Department of Energy Science & Engineering, a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, and a faculty scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He leads a group of more than thirty researchers tackling the fundamentals of redox and electrochemical processes in the solid state.

Read some of William’s work in EES: Coulombically-stabilized oxygen hole polarons enable fully reversible oxygen redox

Jan Rossmeisl is a Professor of Theoretical Catalysis and heads the Center for High Entropy Alloy Catalysis at the Department of Chemistry at Copenhagen University. Before joining the University of Copenhagen in April 2015, Jan was an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark.

Read some of Jan’s work in EES: Towards an atomistic understanding of electrocatalytic partial hydrocarbon oxidation: propene on palladium

Jennifer Wilcox is the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research takes aim at the nexus of energy and the environment, developing both mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize negative climate impacts associated with society’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Read some of Jennifer’s work in EES: Carbon capture and storage (CCS): the way forward

Karen Wilson is Professor of Catalysis in the Centre for Catalysis and Clean Energy at Griffith University, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Zhengzhou University, China. Her research focusses on the development of tunable porous heterogeneous catalysts for use in green and sustainable chemistry, and the valorisation of waste bio-derived feedstocks for biofuels and chemicals production.

Read some of Karen’s work in EES: Catalytic selective ring opening of polyaromatics for cleaner transportation fuels

Find out more about our new Board members on our website!

Introducing our newest Advisory Board appointments

We are also pleased to announce new appointments we have made to the Energy & Environmental Science Advisory Board. Please join us in welcoming the following additions to the EES family:

• Nieves Espinosa, University of Murcia, Spain
• Thomas Kirchartz, Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), Germany
• Zhiyong Jason Ren, Princeton University, USA
• David Sinton, University of Toronto, Canada

Our Advisory Board play an important role in assisting our editorial team with submissions to the journal, so we are very excited to have them on board.

Please join us in welcoming all our new Energy & Environmental Science Board members!

We are delighted to welcome our newest members to the Energy & Environmental Science Advisory Board!

Introducing Profs. Annamaria Petrozza, Evelyn Wang, Li-Zhu Wu, Yan Yu, Hong Jin Fan, Laura Herz, Pooi See Lee, Yi-Chun Lu and Shelley Minteer. We are so happy to be working with you all.

The Energy & Environmental Science Advisory Board is comprised of leading researchers from across the breadth of energy science, who support the journal as reviewers and authors, providing strategic feedback and acting as advocates in the community. Meet our full Editorial and Advisory Boards on our webpage: https://rsc.li/ees and find out a bit more about our newest Advisory Board members below, alongside examples of their research.

Pictured left to right: Annamaria Petrozza, Evelyn Wang, Li-Zhu Wu and Yan Yu

Pictured left to right:  Profs. Hong Jin Fan, Laura Herz, Pooi See Lee, Yi-Chun Lu, Shelley Minteer

Prof. Annamaria Petrozza works at the Istituto Italiano di Technologia, Italy. Her research aims to shed light on interfacial optoelectronic mechanisms with the goal of improving efficiency and stability of solution processable semiconductors and devices, with special emphasis on highly efficient third-generation solar cells.

Read some of Petrozza’s work in Energy & Environmental Science: 17.6% stabilized efficiency in low-temperature processed planar perovskite solar cells

Prof. Evelyn Wang is the director of the Device Research Laboratory and chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research interests include heat and mass transfer, energy efficient systems, water harvesting, purification and conservation and micro/nano devices.

Read some of Wang’s work in Energy & Environmental Science: Ultrahigh-efficiency desalination via a thermally-localized multistage solar still and Passive, high-efficiency thermally-localized solar desalination

Prof. Li-Zhu Wu is the Director of the Lab of Supramolecular Photochemistry at the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The group works on photochemical conversion, including artificial photosynthesis for hydrogen and oxygen evolution as well as carbon dioxide reduction; Visible light catalysis for efficient organic transformation, particularly for activation of inert chemical bonds using photochemical strategies; and photoinduced electron transfer, energy transfer, and chemical reactions in supramolecular systems.

Read some of Wu’s work in Energy & Environmental Science: Graphdiyne for crucial gas involved catalytic reactions in energy conversion applications

Prof. Yan Yu at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), works on the design of novel nanomaterials for clean energy, with a particular focus on batteries and the fundamental science of energy-storage systems.

Read some of Yu’s work in Energy & Environmental Science: Ionogel-based sodium ion micro-batteries with a 3D Na-ion diffusion mechanism enable ultrahigh rate capability

Prof. Hong Jin Fan works at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). His research interests focus on exploring new energy materials and understanding their functions in energy conversion and storage processes, including catalysis for hydrogen generation, new redox batteries, and flexible energy devices.

Read some of Fan’s work in Energy & Environmental Science: Tubular TiC fibre nanostructures as supercapacitor electrode materials with stable cycling life and wide-temperature performance

Prof Laura Herz directs the Semiconductors Group at the Clarendon Laboratory and is the Associate Head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division for research at the University of Oxford. The Herz group explores the fundamental science and applications of semiconducting materials and nanostructures ranging from hybrid systems such as sensitized metal oxides and organic-inorganic perovskites to organic molecules and solids, III-V inorganic semiconductors, and nanostructures.

Read some of Herz’s work in Energy & Environmental Science: Preventing phase segregation in mixed-halide perovskites: a perspective

Prof. Pooi See Lee, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), is interested in synthesizing innovative nanomaterials and harnessing their multi-functionality through understanding the structural-property characteristics. She has developed high-energy capacitors, energy-saving electrochromic coatings, novel transparent conductors, flexible and stretchable devices.

Read some of Lee’s work in Energy & Environmental Science: 3D carbon based nanostructures for advanced supercapacitors

Prof. Yi-Chun Lu, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, leads the Electrochemical Energy & Interfaces Laboratory. Lu’s research group looks at redox flow batteries, Li-air batteries, Li-sulphur batteries, and energy storage systems for electric vehicles.

Read some of Lu’s work in Energy & Environmental Science: High-areal-capacity conversion type iron-based hybrid redox flow batteries

Prof. Shelley Minteer is a group leader at the University of Utah. The Minteer Group is focused on improving the abiotic-biotic interface between biocatalysts and electrode surfaces for enhanced bioelectrocatalysis. These biocatalysts include microbial cells, organelles (mitochondria and thylakoid membranes), redox proteins, and oxidoreductase enzymes. They design electrode structures for enhanced flux at electrode surfaces for biosensor and biofuel cell applications.

Read some of Minteer’s work in Energy & Environmental Science: Nitrogenase bioelectrocatalysis: heterogeneous ammonia and hydrogen production by MoFe protein

The Editorial team extends a warm welcome to all our new Advisory Board members, we are very much looking forward to working with everyone.