Seibold et al. show that shifting energy-intensive production of green industrial precursors abroad can lower costs for German industry while reducing the need for domestic hydrogen infrastructure. European sourcing captures almost half of the savings available from global imports and offers a middle ground between cost efficiency and import dependence. The results highlight how the location of early production steps can reshape both industrial competitiveness and the energy system supporting it.

Climate policy treats rangeland soil carbon as a measurable commodity. Single-output carbon programs can narrow the ecological and institutional heterogeneity needed for adaptation. We propose that this heterogeneity may also support carbon persistence and argue for managing rangelands as heterogeneous adaptation reserves through interacting disturbances, flexible technologies, and collaborative networks.

A carbon-negative power sector could offset residual emissions from hard-to-abate industries, but most studies model carbon removal technologies individually or as bioenergy-air-capture pairs. Fan et al. build an hourly power system model that also incorporates coal-biomass co-firing with carbon capture, linked to economy-wide and geological models for China. Across 147 scenarios, combining all three removal technologies achieves the deepest net-negative emissions while generally yielding the lowest electricity shortages and costs, offering insights for other coal-reliant economies seeking secure, affordable, carbon-negative power..

Human activity is a dominant driver of fire regimes, yet isolating its effects from climatic variability remains a challenge. Leveraging the unprecedented reduction in mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment, Wang et al. show that global fire incidence declined by 12.3% due to reduced ignitions yet rose in regions where suppression was diminished. These results provide a mechanistic understanding of the opposing forces of anthropogenic ignition and suppression, explaining the spatial heterogeneity observed in global fire dynamics.

Soil algae offer a promising yet underutilized strategy for climate-smart agriculture. This perspective highlights multifunctional contributions of soil algae to productivity, resilience, and emissions mitigation through nutrient supply, biostimulation, and soil improvement. It identifies opportunities for deployment in degraded drylands and low-input farming, while outlining key barriers to large-scale adoption.

Chen et al. show that long-term fertilization enhances the potential for reactive oxygen species generation by altering soil redox conditions. Although these species are traditionally viewed as harmful sources of oxidative stress, they also play a beneficial role in fertilized soils. Acting as molecular “keys,” they unlock carbon and phosphorus bound to minerals and resistant organic matter, thereby alleviating microbial resource limitations. The findings reveal an overlooked pathway in soil nutrient cycling and provide insights into sustainable fertilizer management.

With the rapid proliferation of electrochemical energy storage systems for electric vehicles and renewable energy integration, conventional organic liquid electrolytes pose fire-safety risks that limit progress toward higher energy density. Ding et al. review flame-retardant solid-state electrolytes, highlighting a shift toward intrinsic safety and sustainability in next-generation batteries.

Global environmental governance functions through a patchwork of treaty regimes, yet whether their national implementation creates synergies or trade-offs has remained unclear. Using member-state performance data, this article shows trade-offs dominate regime interactions, including for hub institutions like the climate regime. It underscores the urgent need for coordinated hub management, integrated national implementation, and differentiated support for vulnerable countries.

Virdee et al. show that solvent-based direct air capture with electrochemical regeneration could become more energy efficient and cost competitive than previously assumed. Their analysis identifies lower electrodialysis costs, improved air contactor design, and targeted use of carbonic anhydrase enzymes as key opportunities for improvement. The study outlines a practical pathway toward scalable atmospheric carbon removal while showing that reliable, low-carbon electricity remains essential for achieving meaningful climate benefits.

Houssini et al. quantify China’s expanded polystyrene flows and stocks, showing that secondary production accounts for only 25%–28% of the supply and incineration is the predominant disposal fate. Such export-oriented, linear flow results in end-of-life burdens globally. Their findings highlight that circularity requires enhancing domestic recycling and international governance to account for trade-embedded carbon and waste.

Large-scale removal of carbon from the atmosphere will be required as a supplement to fossil fuel reduction to meet climate goals. We review the fundamentals and challenges associated with modifying the ocean’s carbonate chemistry to enhance the ability of Earth’s oceans to store large amounts of carbon.

Deliberative sustainability governance often struggles to deliver effective policy outcomes with high output legitimacy, while technocratic governance often lacks democratic input legitimacy. This perspective develops a framework showing how well-designed multi-stakeholder platforms can generate synergies between input and output legitimacy, illustrating this through Germany’s Commission on the Future of Agriculture.

Andrews et al. combine 15 years of forestry arrest records from Pemba, Tanzania, with high-frequency household economic data to show that seasonal income cycles drive illegal resource extraction, which peaks when clove, fishing, and downstream earnings fall. Climate projections suggest wetter short rains will modestly raise extraction, pointing to income smoothing as a conservation tool.

Landfills may store far more long-lived carbon than climate inventories recognize. A bottom-up analysis of 1,955 Chinese landfills quantifies 476.9 Tg C in inert stocks and shows that selective excavation and improved preservation could turn landfills from net greenhouse gas sources into negative-emissions assets.

Using an extended PyPSA-Eur energy system model, this study examines whether European industry can decarbonize without losing competitiveness. Results show that while electrification and green hydrogen make deep decarbonization feasible, importing green intermediate goods offers a more cost-effective path than relocation or large subsidies.

Dunkel et al. show that that Europe’s cost-optimal hydrogen supply combines domestic production and imports. Across the analyzed weather years, the optimal import share changes by up to 60 percentage points at unchanged import prices. Hydrogen infrastructure should therefore preserve flexibility through scalable domestic production, diversified import supply, and seasonal storage.

The International Maritime Organization set a 2040 target of between 70% and 80% reduction in emissions for ships larger than 5,000 tonnes. The decision on which renewable fuel system is best to achieve this level of decarbonization depends on a range of variables including cost of fuel production, cost of ownership, marginal abatement cost, land use, energy efficiency, and hazard. This work exemplifies a holistic decision-making process to compare fuel production pathways sourced from electricity or biomass to decarbonize international shipping.

Mazzoleni et al. show that rapid transitions between dry and wet conditions frequently precede dengue outbreak onsets at short lag times. Their findings reveal that temperature, humidity, and socioeconomic inequality modify these associations, highlighting the need for climate-informed and equitable approaches to dengue early warning and public health planning.

Carbon capture can help decarbonize European industry, but its success depends on sufficient participation to enable shared CO2 transport and storage infrastructure. Verbist et al. study how carbon removal policy and industry relocation exert opposing forces that determine whether the critical mass for CO2 value chain development is achieved.

As populations age and single-person households become increasingly common, social factors shaping vulnerability to extreme heat warrant greater attention. Tan et al. show that heatwaves are associated with a greater risk of mortality among adults residing in single-person households than among those in multi-person households. These findings identify household structure as an overlooked dimension of heat vulnerability and suggest that heat-health policies should account for the social context in which people experience extreme heat.

Effective environmental action depends on both scientific knowledge being translated into policy and policies being translated into practice. This study reveals persistent, scale-dependent disconnects across this pathway. The uptake of scientific knowledge into global environmental policy is generally slow, with long-established scientific knowledge being adopted earlier, but differs among UN conventions. Conservation outcomes improve at the local level, which highlights the advantages of closer oversight, stronger stakeholder engagement, and more homogeneous socio-environmental contexts for policy implementation.

Jansen et al. show that offshore wind has evolved into a mature, investable asset class. Analyzing 86 global projects, they find financing occurs earlier, relies more on low-cost financing, and increasingly involves international investors. These trends indicate growing confidence and standardization of offshore wind as infrastructure, lowering financing costs and supporting scale-up. The findings provide insights for policymakers and investors seeking to accelerate clean energy deployment.

Villeneuve et al. show that small-scale fishers in Madagascar face different climate risks depending on how and where they fish. Reef habitats used by gleaners reach extreme temperatures at different times of year than deeper zones used by boat-based fishers, exposing gleaned species to heat stress that current fishery management does not yet account for.

Jia et al. demonstrate that nitrogen fertilizer systems sustain global food security yet exacerbate climate change, nitrogen pollution, and air quality deterioration. They uncover a core imbalance over the fertilizer life cycle, in which production contributes most greenhouse gas emissions and application triggers nitrogen losses and related health risks. Integrated carbon–nitrogen management strategies can address these separate environmental pressures and support a sustainable food outlook.

Climate change is reshaping insect communities in northern agroecosystems. Combining ecological monitoring and genomics, this study shows that warming favors migratory leafhoppers, while native parasitoid wasps respond to the same climatic cues and may help suppress leafhopper populations, highlighting new opportunities for climate-resilient and pesticide-free crop protection.

Onodera et al. demonstrate that data center siting shapes the cost and landscape of Japan’s future power system. Dispersing data centers while harnessing regional renewables lowers costs and fossil-fuel reliance. They map the integration cost of end users to identify the spatial variation of cost-effectiveness.

The TROFIC is a low-cost instrument that directly measures the dry-bulb and black-globe temperatures needed for urban heat-stress (WBGT) monitoring. A passive solar chimney ventilates the sensors without a fan or external power, cutting solar bias by 58%–79% in the laboratory and closely tracking a reference weather station in the field.

Data centers are becoming major power system loads as AI expands. This perspective explains how small modular reactors could support firm low-carbon electricity, cooling integration, waste-heat use, and resilience for hyperscale campuses while highlighting the economic, operational, regulatory, and sustainability questions that must shape deployment.

Li et al. report that green finance can simultaneously reduce emissions from power generation and increase upstream embodied emissions from clean-energy equipment and materials. This apparent paradox weakens over time, revealing that carbon accounting boundaries and evaluation periods strongly shape how green finance is judged. The findings call for lifecycle-based assessment of green investment to avoid overlooking emissions shifted beyond the power plant boundary.

Xiao et al. present the design, experimental evaluation, and energy savings potential of an active thermal switch technology for building envelopes, enabling variable thermal resistance. The switch incorporates a low-power motor and a Raspberry Pi-based control for programmable switching, real-time monitoring, and fault detection. Building energy simulations on single-family residential homes across various US cities’ climates indicate that integrating these switches with thermal storage can provide an average energy savings of 738 kWh (24%) and $130 (24%), respectively.

Prete et al. review emerging strategies for agricultural waste valorization to support the circular bioeconomy. The authors focus on extracting high-value secondary metabolites and further upgrading spent biomasses into carbonaceous materials for technological and environmental applications. Furthermore, they evaluate process sustainability through life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. By highlighting environmental hotspots like energy consumption, this review outlines a holistic framework rooted in green chemistry principles, guiding the scalable transition from fossil resources to sustainable alternatives.

Zhong et al. provide a national ecosystem service assessment of carbon storage, sediment retention, nutrient retention, and beneficiary exposure in Canada. Their results identify western forested watersheds as candidate protection priorities and agricultural watersheds with high nutrient export and reduced carbon storage as candidate restoration priorities, offering a national baseline for cross-jurisdictional environmental planning.

The chemical data for aquaculture are scattered across disparate sources, limiting the ability of regulators, researchers, and other stakeholders to monitor chemical use and safeguard aquatic ecosystems. This study presents ReCAnt, an extensive database that consolidates information on 690 chemicals, integrating toxicity, environmental fate, and food web analyses to support evidence-based chemical management in aquaculture.

Mining reshapes vast areas of Earth, but its global biodiversity impact remains poorly quantified. Nimmo et al. show that mining is listed as a threat to nearly 6,000 threatened species and overlaps the ranges of 28% of threatened species with spatial data. Potential future critical-mineral mining could expose more than 3,000 threatened species, highlighting major gaps in conservation assessment and planning.

Xiong et al. map Japan’s future solar and wind urban mine, showing that retired energy systems can become a concentrated source of recyclable materials, economic value, and carbon savings for regional recycling planning.

Yiwen Yang et al. analyze archaea across 34 swine wastewater treatment plants in China and find that they carry diverse nitrogen-cycling genes that are highly active. Unlike many bacteria, archaea carry very few antibiotic resistance genes or virulence factors. The authors also discover that archaea exchange nitrogen-related genes with bacteria, and together they contribute substantially to nitrogen removal. These findings suggest that archaea could be valuable, low-risk microorganisms for sustainable wastewater treatment.

Tan et al. identify distinct temperature and precipitation thresholds that nonlinearly regulate the carbon sink capacity of high-latitude forests. Crossing these climatic thresholds diminishes carbon sink potential, but tree diversity offers resilience. These findings provide a vital basis for guiding climate-adaptive forest management.

Chen et al. examine how protected-area (PA) status relates to staple-grain yield gains and shortfall exposure in Chinese villages. They find that PA slowdowns are spatially uneven, concentrated in staple-grain production regions, and most consequential for villages near shortfall. The study offers village-level indicators for targeted monitoring and support.

Public charging infrastructure is essential for the global transition to electric mobility, yet its deployment remains uneven. Through a global-scale analysis of public electric vehicle charging station distribution, Yang et al. uncover both common and region-specific challenges in charging accessibility across China, the United States, and Europe. Their findings highlight overlooked deployment gaps and provide insights for building a more accessible and equitable charging network worldwide.

Zhao et al. model coastal flood adaptation by integrating physical inundation models with behavioral decision-making. They reveal that extreme sea-level rise triggers severe “climate apathy”: in 2100 projections, adaptation funding collapses to just 7% of 2041 levels. Highly vulnerable shoreline zones bear the immediate costs, while inland areas “free-ride,” exposing spatial inequalities inherent in current US flood insurance policies.

Mountain regions face accelerating environmental and social change, yet uncertainty remains poorly integrated into research and decision-making. Drawing on 25 case studies across five continents, this perspective synthesizes and operationalizes mountain future principles through the lens of uncertainty, proposing a research agenda for resilient, inclusive, and sustainable mountain social-ecological systems.

Phosphogypsum is a massive industrial waste that also contains valuable rare earth elements. Feng et al. report an electricity-driven flash carbothermal reduction strategy that turns phosphogypsum into two useful outputs: recoverable rare earths and calcium sulfide sorbents for water treatment. This work offers a dual-valorization pathway for linking critical material recovery with sustainable waste management.

Xian et al. compile the first unit-level carbon emission inventory for the global ceramic tile industry to analyze emission trends and mitigation potentials. They demonstrate that fuel substitution and carbon capture and storage technology are key to achieving deep decarbonization in this industry.

Yu et al. develop a spatiotemporal multi-objective model that optimizes the synergetic layout of generation, transmission, storage, and demand in China’s power system. This approach is found to enable cost-effective advancement toward carbon neutrality in China’s power sector. By highlighting the role of spatiotemporal synergy among generation, transmission, storage, and demand, the findings advocate for a shift toward an affordable low-carbon transition, offering promising pathways to enhance renewable integration with economic feasibility.