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The energy transition will require a rapid deployment of renewable energy (RE) and electric vehicles (EVs) where other transit modes are unavailable. EV batteries could complement RE generation by providing short-term grid services. However, estimating the market opportunity requires an understanding of many socio-technical parameters and constraints. We quantify the global EV battery capacity available for grid storage using an integrated model incorporating future EV battery deployment, battery degradation, and market participation. We include both in-use and end-of-vehicle-life use phases and find a technical capacity of 32–62 terawatt-hours by 2050. Low participation rates of 12%–43% are needed to provide short-term grid storage demand globally. Participation rates fall below 10% if half of EV batteries at end-of-vehicle-life are used as stationary storage. Short-term grid storage demand could be met as early as 2030 across most regions. Our estimates are generally conservative and offer a lower bound of future opportunities. Renewable energy and electric vehicles will be required for the energy transition, but the global electric vehicle battery capacity available for grid storage is not constrained. Here the authors find that electric vehicle batteries alone could satisfy short-term grid storage demand by as early as 2030.

Building stock growth around the world drives extensive material consumption and environmental impacts. Future impacts will be dependent on the level and rate of socioeconomic development, along with material use and supply strategies. Here we evaluate material-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for residential and commercial buildings along with their reduction potentials in 26 global regions by 2060. For a middle-of-the-road baseline scenario, building material-related emissions see an increase of 3.5 to 4.6 Gt CO2eq yr-1 between 2020–2060. Low- and lower-middle-income regions see rapid emission increase from 750 Mt (22% globally) in 2020 and 2.4 Gt (51%) in 2060, while higher-income regions shrink in both absolute and relative terms. Implementing several material efficiency strategies together in a High Efficiency (HE) scenario could almost half the baseline emissions. Yet, even in this scenario, the building material sector would require double its current proportional share of emissions to meet a 1.5 °C-compatible target. Building construction causes large material-related emissions which present a serious decarbonization challenge. Here, the authors show that the building material sector could halve emissions by increasing efficiency until 2060 but even then its emissions would be twice as high as needed to meet the 1.5 °C target.

The circular economy model aims to reduce the consumption of virgin materials by increasing the time materials remain in use while transitioning economic activities to sectors with lower material intensities. Circular economy concepts have largely been focussed on the role of businesses and institutions, yet consumer changes can have a large impact. In a more circular economy consumers often become users-they purchase access to goods and services rather than physical products. Other consumer engagement includes purchasing renewable energy, recycling and using repair and maintenance services etc. However, there are few studies on whether consumers actually make these sorts of consumption choices at large scale, and what impacts arise from these choices on life-cycle material consumption. Here we examine what types of households exhibit circular consumption habits, and whether such habits are reflected in their material footprints. We link the Eurostat Household Budget Survey 2010 with a global input-output model and assess the material footprints of 189 800 households across 24 European countries, making the results highly generalizable in the European context. Our results reveal that different types of households (young, seniors, families etc) adopt different circular features in their consumption behaviour. Furthermore, we show that due to rebound effects, the circular consumption habits investigated have a weak connection to total material footprint. Our findings highlight the limitations of circular consumption in today's economic systems, and the need for stronger policy incentives, such as shifting taxation from renewable resources and labour to non-renewable resources.

Dietary choices drive both health and environmental outcomes. Information on diets come from many sources, with nationally recommended diets (NRDs) by governmental or similar advisory bodies the most authoritative. Little or no attention is placed on the environmental impacts within NRDs. Here we quantify the impact of nation-specific NRDs, compared with an average diet in 37 nations, representing 64% of global population. We focus on greenhouse gases (GHGs), eutrophication, and land use because these have impacts reaching or exceeding planetary boundaries. We show that compared with average diets, NRDs in high-income nations are associated with reductions in GHG, eutrophication, and land use from 13.0 to 24.8%, 9.8 to 21.3%, and 5.7 to 17.6%, respectively. In upper-middle–income nations, NRDs are associated with slight decrease in impacts of 0.8–12.2%, 7.7–19.4%, and 7.2–18.6%. In poorer middle-income nations, impacts increase by 12.4–17.0%, 24.5–31.9%, and 8.8–14.8%. The reduced environmental impact in high-income countries is driven by reductions in calories (∼54% of effect) and a change in composition (∼46%). The increased environmental impacts of NRDs in low- and middle-income nations are associated with increased intake in animal products. Uniform adoption of NRDs across these nations would result in reductions of 0.19–0.53 Gt CO₂ eq·a−1, 4.32–10.6 Gt PO 4 3 − eq·a−1, and 1.5–2.8 million km², while providing the health cobenefits of adopting an NRD. As a small number of dietary guidelines are beginning to incorporate more general environmental concerns, we anticipate that this work will provide a standardized baseline for future work to optimize recommended diets further.

High-income countries often outsource material demands to poorer countries along with the associated environmental damage. This phenomenon can also occur within (large) countries, such as China, which was responsible for 24 to 30% of the global material footprint (MF) between 2007 and 2010. Understanding the distribution and development of China’s MF is hence critical for resource efficiency and circular economy ambitions globally. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of China’s MF at the provincial and sectoral levels. We combine provincial-level input–output data with sector- and province-specific trade data, detailed material extraction data, and the global input–output database EXIOBASE. We find that some provinces have MFs equivalent to medium-sized, high-income countries and limited evidence of material decoupling. Lower-income regions with high levels of material extraction can have an MF per capita as large as developed provinces due to much higher material intensities. The higher-income south-coastal provinces have lower MF per capita than equally developed provinces. This finding relates partly to differences in economic structure but indicates the potential for improvement across provinces. Investment via capital formation is up to 4 times more resource-intensive than consumption and drives 49 to 86% of provincial-level MFs (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average is 37%). Resource-efficient production, efficient use of capital goods/infrastructure, and circular design are essential for reductions in China’s MF. Policy efforts to shift to a high-quality development model may reduce material intensities, preferably while avoiding the further outsourcing of high-intensity activities to other provinces or lower-income countries.

Aggregates (sand, gravel, crushed stone) make up half of all globally extracted materials and present substantial environmental challenges. China, which consumes half of the world’s aggregates, is undergoing profound shifts in both supply and demand. Our scenario-based model tracks aggregate flows and stocks across 30 end-uses in Chinese provinces from 1978 to 2050. We find that China’s aggregate demand peaked around 2015, accompanied by a gradual and continuous shift from natural to manufactured aggregates. Total demand after 2030 is projected to decline to ~50% of 2020 levels in circular economy scenarios. Per capita stocks tend to saturate by 2040, although saturation timing varies across provinces. Stock saturation may lead to increased availability of recycled aggregates, which could become a primary supply source. We highlight the critical need for stricter policies and regulations for the aggregate industry, offering insights for other economies facing similar challenges. China’s aggregate demand peaked around 2015, shifting to manufactured sources. Post-2030 demand may halve as stocks saturate, enabling recycled aggregates to dominate. Enhanced circular economy policies are vital to ensure this transition.

Ammonia (NH 3 ) has significant adverse effects on biodiversity, human and ecosystem health. More than 90% of European NH 3 emissions originate from manure and synthetic fertilizer. Understanding emissions from agricultural products at a high-resolution is essential for environmental policy making. Here, we present an Agricultural, Product-specific, AMMOnia emission dataset (AP-AMMO) for 17 crop groups, 2 grass types, and 6 livestock types across Europe at 5-arc minute resolution. We show that European agriculture emitted 3.5Tg NH 3 -N in 2017, with major livestock products (dairy cattle, other cattle, and swine) and major crop and grassland products (wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, and permanent grass) contributing 66% and 14%, respectively. When aggregated to national and regional scales, AP-AMMO emissions fall within the range of previous estimates of commonly used (yet more aggregated) models (e.g. EDGAR, GAINS, CLRTAP, IMAGE-GNM, MASAGE). Discrepancies occur due to different excretion and emission factors and the spatial distributions of the production and management of agricultural products. This high-resolution database provides a basis for assessing food system transition impacts on the European nitrogen cycle.

Vertical farming (VF) could play a role in addressing some global food challenges, yet it requires higher crop yields and lower costs to become viable at large scales. While reductions in capital intensity are required, the need for new cultivars has been largely overlooked. This is partially a result of common crop dynamic models: Energy Cascade Models (ECMs). ECMs derive yield estimates based on assimilate production from incoming energy only, neglecting a plant’s limitations in storing and transporting assimilates. However, VF crops often experience sink-limited as opposed to source-limited conditions. Here, we adapt the ECM into a Plant Balance Model (PBM) that includes sink-limited conditions and show that current VF crop yields for lettuce and tomato are already close to sink-limited conditions. Further improvements in VF lettuce yields from the literature (700 kg m −2 yr −1 ) would require an unprecedented 51% decrease in crop cycle time (6.8 days). We estimate potential lettuce and tomato yields at 330 and 369 kg m −2 yr −1 , respectively. However, improving lettuce and tomato yields beyond 230 and 145 kg m −2 yr −1 , respectively, would require temperatures that current genetics do not tolerate. By assessing the sink-limited nature of current VF cultivars using the PBM, we reveal that proactive breeding programs are essential and without them, yields may stagnate very soon and limit future scalability.

The shift from traditional diets to a diet characterised by higher consumption of sugars, fats, processed foods and animal-source foods is often termed the nutrition transition. Although research has focused on the health outcomes of this transition, there is an increasing interest in environmental impacts. Here we investigated the potential changes in impacts driven by the nutrition transition in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey between 2011 and 2030. We combined a multi-regional input–output database (EXIOBASE) with food demand projections (OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2018). In a business-as-usual scenario, we assessed the impacts of the projected dietary changes on climate change, marine and freshwater eutrophication, land stress and water scarcity. Then, we built a second, zero-hunger scenario to investigate the impacts due to the eradication of hunger by 2030, a target of Sustainable Development Goal 2. The results show that total growth in environmental impacts through food consumption is the highest for Indonesia (44–54%), India (35–43%) and Mexico (31–48%). The total impacts stay highest in Brazil (land stress), China (eutrophication) and India (climate change and water scarcity), mainly driven by meat, fish and dairy consumption, respectively. The zero-hunger scenario results in similar health improvements across all countries: 0.08 to 0.12 prevented disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) per undernourished person. It would achieve the highest health improvements in India and China with around 375,000 human life equivalents of prevented DALYs combined. There are only slight trade-offs between hunger eradication and environmental goals.

“Beyond-GDP” metrics are essential for understanding societal progress. Yet despite their importance, these metrics are scattered across various databases, hindering accessibility and interdisciplinary analysis. Addressing this gap, we present the ‘WISE database’ – the first extensive collection of important Beyond-GDP metrics organized by Wellbeing, Inclusion, and Sustainability (WISE) dimensions. The WISE database consolidates data from a variety of sources, including international institutions and academic publications. It encompasses over one million data points across 244 metrics, covering 218 countries and 61 country groupings, from specific social and environmental indicators to the main Beyond-GDP indexes, and is augmented by essential metadata. The data primarily spans from 1995 to 2015, with some metrics extending back to the 19 th century. To improve accessibility and data interpretation, a user-friendly online visualization tool has been developed. The WISE database aims to foster a broader view of societal progress, facilitate research on synergies and trade-offs of wellbeing, inclusion, and sustainability, and provide a foundation for interdisciplinary research.