Translation Materials for a Net Zero Tomorrow

Lithium-ion batteries have changed modern life, powering electrification life and energy storage systems. As the trend of the world accelerates to a net-zero future, the limitations of traditional lithium-ion batteries have drawn more attention. The battery has a high-level dependency on lithium, cobalt, and nickel—these key components are limited in global supply and geographically concentrated in several countries. The rising demand indicates a significant supply deficit in the near future, thereby intensifying the challenges we are encountering. Moreover, lithium-ion battery is difficult to recycle and the process is energy-intensive. Furthermore, the high volume consuming of water to extract lithium is deserved to highlight (~682 times more than sodium extraction). Shifting from “waste management” to “design for re-use” is significantly meaningful for achieving a net-zero tomorrow. Finally, we would like to express thanks to Prof. Zijian Zheng and the Journal office's support to this special issue. And take this opportunity to thank all the authors. All authors contribute equally to this editorial. The authors have nothing to report. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.