Renewable Energy Technologies for Sustainable Development

Global warming and climate change are major challenges facing our society in the 21st century. Both are mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels to supply energy. The adoption of renewable energies will play a pivotal role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energy technologies are crucial for realizing sustainable development. This special issue, published in collaboration with Advanced Materials Technologies, presents comprehensive reviews and discussions on the topics related to renewable energy technologies for advanced sustainable systems: i) Lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries, non-aqueous lithium-oxygen batteries, lithium(sodium)-carbon dioxide batteries and sodium-ion capacitors, ii) methanol fuel cells and microbial fuel cells for electricity generation, iii) Perovskite solar cells and solar-redox flow batteries, iv) layered materials for thermoelectric energy, and v) global artificial photosynthesis and renewable energy storage for the sustainocene. Rechargeable batteries are widely considered as the key technology for the renewable energy industry because sources of renewable energy are intermittent and depend on weather conditions to generate electricity. Therefore, this renewable power must be stored and delivered when the electricity network is in demand. On the other hand, rechargeable batteries are also crucial for the electric vehicle industry, in particular for autonomous vehicles. This issue summarizes cathode materials for lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries, in-situ techniques to characterize failure mechanisms of lithium-ion batteries, electrolytes for lithium-oxygen batteries, perspectives of Li(Na)CO2 batteries, and cell configuration and electrode materials for non-aqueous sodium-ion supercapacitors. Solar redox flow batteries combine photoelectrochemical cells and redox flow batteries as one integrated system, which are capable for large-scale real-time electricity storage and conversion. A review in this issue discusses all aspects of the working mechanism, device engineering and performance evaluation of novel solar redox flow battery systems. Fuel-cells (FCs) are electrochemical devices that can directly convert chemical energy of fuels such as hydrogen and methanol to electricity. A critical review in this special issue covers high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. In a similar way microbial fuel cells (MFC) can be used to generate electrical power from municipal waste sludge, which is shown in a research article. It was found that the maximum output voltage was affected by the nanoscale zerovalent iron during the start-up process. Perovskite solar-cells (PSCs) have attracted extensive interests owing to their high energy conversion efficiency and facile solution processability for fabrication. As part of this special issue, recent progress of PSCs is reviewed with an emphasis on low-cost manufacturing and extending long-term service life. Artificial photosynthesis (AP) for renewable energy conversion and storage can achieve ultimate long-term sustainability. An Essay looks at the developments of integrating AP with an analysis on the advantages and disadvantages of this technology. It has been an absolute joy and pleasure to edit this special issue. I would like to thank the editor of Advanced Sustainable System, Dr. Till von Graberg, for coordinating the special issue and handling all papers. I would like to sincerely thank all authors for their high quality contributions to this special issues. Guoxiu Wang is the Director of the Centre for Clean Energy Technology and a Distinguished Professor at University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. He is an expert in materials chemistry, electrochemistry, energy storage and conversion, and battery technologies. He is a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts. His research interests include lithium-ion batteries, lithium-air batteries, sodium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur batteries, supercapacitors, hydrogen storage materials, fuel-cells, graphene and MXenes.