18 research idea notes tagged “energy”. Read them as Markdown, JSON or an Atom feed.
Carbon capture and storage, carbon removal and direct air capture appear on about 34 recent papers, mostly in economics, while governments now pay large subsidies for them. How much does a tonne captured actually cost in the projects that run, and which uses are worth the subsidy?
Papers in the last 30 days — carbon capture and storage: 3 · carbon dioxide removal: 1
Electricity access, energy access and rural electrification appear on 106 recent papers, mostly in economics, and the topic is fading (21 papers in the last quarter against about 28 expected). Yet the push to connect Africa's unconnected relies on mini-grids and solar home systems. Which works better, for whom, and at what cost per household?
Energy poverty appears on 107 recent papers, almost all in economics, but only 12 energy-poverty papers carry a measurement or index keyword. The measures in use (spending shares, inability to heat, multidimensional indices) classify different households as poor. How much do the findings depend on the measure chosen?
Papers in the last 30 days — energy poverty: 6 · energy affordability: 1
Income redistribution, welfare losses and social welfare are rising keywords in the economics journals, and carbon taxes and emissions trading are large topics. Yet only 34 of 422 recent carbon-pricing papers carry a distributional or household keyword. As carbon prices reach heating and transport fuels, who bears the cost, and does returning the revenue make it fair?
Papers in the last 30 days — carbon tax: 6 · distributional effects: 2
Demand response, distributed energy resources, virtual power plants and peer-to-peer energy trading appear on 94 recent papers, mostly in economics and AI, and the topic is fading, with 17 in the last quarter against about 23 per quarter before. Aggregators now bid household batteries and heat pumps into power markets. How much flexibility do households really deliver, and what do they get for it?
Papers in the last 30 days — virtual power plants: 2 · demand response: 5
Remanufacturing and closed-loop supply chains are growing in the operations research journals, and the first large wave of electric-vehicle batteries is reaching the end of its first life. Should a used battery go to stationary storage, to remanufacturing or straight to recycling, and who should decide?
Papers in the last 30 days — remanufacturing: 2 · closed-loop supply chain: 4
Wind power, photovoltaic power and solar irradiance forecasting appear on 52 recent papers, almost all in AI journals, and only 8 of them carry a market, bidding, price, imbalance or trading keyword. Forecasts are judged by error metrics, but wind and solar operators pay for forecast errors in imbalance charges. Which forecast improvements pay, and which do not?
Papers in the last 30 days — photovoltaic power forecasting: 1
Oil prices are a rising keyword in the economics journals, and oil-price shocks remain a standard driver in inflation models. But none of the 189 recent oil-price papers carries an electric-vehicle keyword. As electric vehicles spread, is oil's grip on inflation weakening, and where first?
Papers in the last 30 days — oil price shocks: 3 · oil prices: 3
Nuclear energy appears on 26 recent papers and small modular reactors on 4, mostly in the economics journals. Technology firms now sign deals to restart closed plants and fund new reactors for data centres, and Japan has restarted reactors idle since 2011. What do these deals cost, who bears the risk, and does public acceptance follow?
Papers in the last 30 days — nuclear energy: 2 · nuclear energy policy: 1
Rooftop solar, prosumers and net metering appear on 50 recent papers, mostly in economics, and the topic is fading, with 7 papers in the last quarter against about 14 per quarter before. California and other markets have cut the payment for exported power. Did installations collapse, and did batteries take their place?
Papers in the last 30 days — rooftop solar: 1 · net metering: 1
Energy markets are one of the rising keywords in the finance and economics journals, and wholesale power prices now often turn negative when solar output peaks. Batteries profit from that spread, but they also erase it. How much is storage worth as it scales, and who should pay for it?
Papers in the last 30 days — electricity prices: 1 · battery energy storage: 1
Heat pumps appear on 12 recent papers, energy retrofits on 7 and building energy efficiency on 10, almost all in the economics journals. Heating is the hardest part of home decarbonization, and subsidies have had uneven results. Who installs, do the energy savings match the models, and why do many households not switch?
Papers in the last 30 days — building energy efficiency: 2
Green hydrogen appears on 32 recent papers and hydrogen policy on 11, mostly in the economics journals, while projects are being cancelled as costs stay high. Which uses of hydrogen survive at realistic prices, and what do the subsidies buy?
Papers in the last 30 days — green hydrogen: 4 · hydrogen policy: 1
Electric trucks are entering freight fleets, and routing them is a growing problem in operations research. But most models assume a charger is free when the truck arrives; only 5 of 66 recent papers on electric-vehicle routing and charging carry a queue, waiting or congestion keyword. How much do charging queues change routes, fleet size and costs?
Papers in the last 30 days — electric trucks: 2
Data centres appear on just 16 recent papers across the tracked journals, though the count is rising, and electricity demand on 17. AI training and inference are driving the first sustained growth in electricity demand in rich countries for decades. Who pays for the new capacity, and do data centres crowd out electrification elsewhere?
Critical minerals rose from almost nothing to one of the fastest-growing keywords across the tracked journals this year. Export controls on gallium, germanium, graphite and some rare earths since 2023 are natural experiments. Do they raise costs for clean-energy producers, speed up substitution and new supply, or both?
Papers in the last 30 days — critical minerals: 2 · rare earth elements: 3
A "just transition" is now a common theme in the economics journals, and many coal plants and mines have announced closure dates. Closures known years in advance are a rare chance to see whether workers and towns can prepare. What happens to coal workers' earnings, and to the towns around them?
Papers in the last 30 days — coal-fired power plants: 1
Edge and cloud computing appear on 151 recent papers, with 43 in the last quarter against about 34 per quarter before, and 46 of them carry an energy, carbon or green keyword, mostly about device energy. Carbon-aware scheduling, which moves computing jobs to times and places where the grid is clean, appears on one paper. How much carbon could it save, and who would pay for the delay?
Papers in the last 30 days — cloud computing: 2 · edge computing: 4