{"title":"Deploying photovoltaic systems in global open-pit mines for a clean energy transition","authors":"Kechao Wang, Jiatong Zhou, Runjia Yang, Suchen Xu, Zhenqi Hu, Wu Xiao","doi":"10.1038/s41893-025-01594-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41893-025-01594-w","url":null,"abstract":"Climate action requires rapid scaling of solar energy while minimizing land conflicts. Solar farms often compete with agriculture and ecosystems, but repurposing abandoned mines could offer a solution. We assess global open-pit mining sites as potential solar hubs, analysing their technical feasibility and deployment timelines under diverse future scenarios. Using a residual artificial neural network and energy demand projections, we find that these disturbed lands could host solar installations covering around 48,000 km2—ten times the global solar footprint in 2018. Their total generation potential (4,764 TWh yr−1) could meet projected 2050 global electricity needs. While Mediterranean countries show the highest readiness for mine-to-solar conversions, African nations lag despite having optimal sunlight owing to infrastructure and policy barriers. Our scenario analysis reveals that deployment timing and scale depend heavily on economic growth, clean energy costs and fossil fuel prices—with aggressive transitions requiring solar capacity exceeding current mine areas by 106%. This study provides a road map for strategically aligning solar expansion with post-mining land revitalization. The transition to clean energy requires the expansion of solar photovoltaic systems, which often compete with other land uses. Now a study explores the potential benefits of solar installations in open-pit mines around the world.","PeriodicalId":19056,"journal":{"name":"Nature Sustainability","volume":"8 9","pages":"1037-1047"},"PeriodicalIF":27.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145123177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jingqi Sun, Yiming Feng, Ru Zheng, Yimin Mao, Qile Zhu, Xiaogang Wu, Lingrui Kong, Kuo Zhang, Sitong Liu
{"title":"Solar-enhanced low-temperature biological wastewater treatment","authors":"Jingqi Sun, Yiming Feng, Ru Zheng, Yimin Mao, Qile Zhu, Xiaogang Wu, Lingrui Kong, Kuo Zhang, Sitong Liu","doi":"10.1038/s41893-025-01591-z","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41893-025-01591-z","url":null,"abstract":"Biological wastewater treatment (BWT) is critical to safeguard the aqueous environment. However, enzyme activities in microbial metabolism are inhibited by low temperatures, making BWT implementation in cold environments challenging. Here we propose a strategy to endow BWT facilities with low-temperature operation resilience by integrating photothermal technology with BWT using photothermal carriers (PTCs). Specifically, α-Fe2O3@polyaniline was coated onto a high-conductivity SiC ceramic matrix on a PTC, forming functional partitions for bacterial colonization. The upper layers of the PTCs have an interlaced porous structure and photothermal functions, which provided stable energy conversion and light shielding. The heat conducted downward formed a mesophilic, lightless zone in the lower PTC layers, resulting in high thermal conduction and bioaffinity. Consequently, anammox bacteria, a key biome for sustainable BWT, can be enriched in these PTCs, as evidenced by a 21.4% increase in abundance and a 2.2-fold increase in biomass. With the use of PTCs in a BWT facility under 0.6 kW m−2 illumination, the nitrogen removal performance at low temperature (15 °C) was 5.8 times higher than the case without the use of PTCs. Overall, this work shows how solar energy can be used to enhance the resilience of BWT to low temperatures, improving the applicability of BWT in cold regions. Biological wastewater treatment is greatly challenging in cold environments as low temperatures inhibit enzyme activity in microbial metabolism. This work presents a strategy that integrates biological wastewater treatment with photothermal technology to improve its resilience to low temperatures.","PeriodicalId":19056,"journal":{"name":"Nature Sustainability","volume":"8 9","pages":"1048-1057"},"PeriodicalIF":27.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145122845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Solar-enhanced biological wastewater treatment","authors":"Wenbin Wang, Yue Huang, Peng Wang","doi":"10.1038/s41893-025-01587-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41893-025-01587-9","url":null,"abstract":"Biological wastewater treatment is a key process for industrial and municipal wastewater remediation; however, treatment performance declines notably under low-temperature environmental conditions (≤15 °C). Now, researchers report a solar–thermal conversion strategy that sustains the bacterial micro-niche at a high temperature (>30 °C) by efficiently converting solar energy into thermal energy.","PeriodicalId":19056,"journal":{"name":"Nature Sustainability","volume":"8 9","pages":"990-991"},"PeriodicalIF":27.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145122844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Striving for coherence","authors":"Cees J. N. Buisman","doi":"10.1038/s41893-025-01601-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41893-025-01601-0","url":null,"abstract":"Transforming wastewater treatment into a system that closes the nutrient cycle is paramount to achieve a fairer, healthier and cleaner future, argues Cees Buisman.","PeriodicalId":19056,"journal":{"name":"Nature Sustainability","volume":"8 8","pages":"851-852"},"PeriodicalIF":27.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145122931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Piyush Mehta, Marc Müller, Meredith T. Niles, Kyle Frankel Davis
{"title":"Nutritional outcomes of irrigation expansion","authors":"Piyush Mehta, Marc Müller, Meredith T. Niles, Kyle Frankel Davis","doi":"10.1038/s41893-025-01593-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41893-025-01593-x","url":null,"abstract":"Assessing linkages between irrigation expansion and child diet diversity in the global south revealed larger diet diversity improvements in water-stressed regions. Future irrigation planning should explicitly incorporate nutrition-sensitive strategies to ensure food security of local communities while maintaining sustainable water withdrawals.","PeriodicalId":19056,"journal":{"name":"Nature Sustainability","volume":"8 8","pages":"853-854"},"PeriodicalIF":27.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01593-x.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145122957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Péter Batáry, Róbert Gallé, Dávid Korányi, Tamás Lakatos, Balázs Deák, Nikolett Gallé-Szpisjak, Melinda Kabai, Csaba Koszta, Dorota Kotowska, Riho Marja, Brigitta Palotás, Borbála Szabó, Attila Torma, András Báldi, Erzsébet Hornung, Zoltán László, Zsolt Molnár, Jenő J. Purger, Gábor Seress, István Urák, Dragica Purger, Krisztina Sándor, László Somay, Gabriella Süle, Orsolya Valkó, Andreea Rebeka Zsigmond, Christina Fischer, Lorenzo Marini, Teja Tscharntke, Katalin Szitár, Edina Török
{"title":"Biodiversity and human well-being trade-offs and synergies in villages","authors":"Péter Batáry, Róbert Gallé, Dávid Korányi, Tamás Lakatos, Balázs Deák, Nikolett Gallé-Szpisjak, Melinda Kabai, Csaba Koszta, Dorota Kotowska, Riho Marja, Brigitta Palotás, Borbála Szabó, Attila Torma, András Báldi, Erzsébet Hornung, Zoltán László, Zsolt Molnár, Jenő J. Purger, Gábor Seress, István Urák, Dragica Purger, Krisztina Sándor, László Somay, Gabriella Süle, Orsolya Valkó, Andreea Rebeka Zsigmond, Christina Fischer, Lorenzo Marini, Teja Tscharntke, Katalin Szitár, Edina Török","doi":"10.1038/s41893-025-01592-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41893-025-01592-y","url":null,"abstract":"Europe’s rural landscapes, shaped over millennia, support high biodiversity but often have lower living standards than urban areas, potentially leading to social and environmental injustice. Here we studied biodiversity and socioeconomic settings in Central and Eastern European villages across landscape complexity and urbanization gradients. We surveyed the biodiversity of villages by sampling nine taxonomic groups, including plants, arthropods and birds. We found 15% lower multitrophic diversity in villages in agricultural than in forest-dominated landscapes. City vicinity enhanced human well-being (estimated with Better Life Index) but did not affect biodiversity despite a larger human footprint. In agglomerated villages in forest-dominated landscapes, biodiversity was high, with higher Better Life Index and footprint metrics, suggesting associations between biodiversity, socioeconomic status and, thus, environmental injustice. Our results show the high socioecological value of maintaining or restoring landscape complexity around villages and their green infrastructure, requiring top-down incentives and bottom-up initiatives. While biodiversity levels have been studied in many different landscapes, villages have been relatively unexplored in comparison. This study examines biodiversity in Eastern European villages across landscape complexity and proximity to cities in the context of social and economic well-being.","PeriodicalId":19056,"journal":{"name":"Nature Sustainability","volume":"8 8","pages":"894-904"},"PeriodicalIF":27.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01592-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145122955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Philippe Delacote, Sylvain Chabé-Ferret, Anna Creti, Katharyn Duffy, Micah Elias, Alejandro Guizar-Coutiño, Ben Filewod, Ben Groom, Andreas Kontoleon, Gwenole LeVelly, Tara L’Horty, Anouch Missirian, Thales A. P. West
{"title":"Restoring credibility in carbon offsets through systematic ex post evaluation","authors":"Philippe Delacote, Sylvain Chabé-Ferret, Anna Creti, Katharyn Duffy, Micah Elias, Alejandro Guizar-Coutiño, Ben Filewod, Ben Groom, Andreas Kontoleon, Gwenole LeVelly, Tara L’Horty, Anouch Missirian, Thales A. P. West","doi":"10.1038/s41893-025-01589-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41893-025-01589-7","url":null,"abstract":"A key factor undermining the credibility of carbon offsets is the evaluation of project baselines and their impact. The ex ante scenarios constructed by project developers in accordance with rules set by certification schemes have been challenged by ex post evaluations from scientists, who frequently document cases of credit allocations that overestimate the actual emission reductions. Increasing credibility requires methodologies that reliably measure project outcomes and prevent overcrediting—an objective that ex post evaluations may be well suited to achieve. We explore how systematic ex post evaluations could restore credibility to certification schemes in the voluntary carbon market. Inaccuracies in the evaluation of project impacts, even under ex ante scenarios, can cause overestimation or underestimation of carbon offsets. This study shows the potential of systematic ex post evaluations to enhance the credibility of voluntary carbon market schemes.","PeriodicalId":19056,"journal":{"name":"Nature Sustainability","volume":"8 7","pages":"733-740"},"PeriodicalIF":27.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145122949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Maximilian Mann, Thomas P. Nicholls, Harshal D. Patel, Lynn S. Lisboa, Jasmine M. M. Pople, Le Nhan Pham, Max J. H. Worthington, Matthew R. Smith, Yanting Yin, Gunther G. Andersson, Christopher T. Gibson, Louisa J. Esdaile, Claire E. Lenehan, Michelle L. Coote, Zhongfan Jia, Justin M. Chalker
{"title":"Sustainable gold extraction from ore and electronic waste","authors":"Maximilian Mann, Thomas P. Nicholls, Harshal D. Patel, Lynn S. Lisboa, Jasmine M. M. Pople, Le Nhan Pham, Max J. H. Worthington, Matthew R. Smith, Yanting Yin, Gunther G. Andersson, Christopher T. Gibson, Louisa J. Esdaile, Claire E. Lenehan, Michelle L. Coote, Zhongfan Jia, Justin M. Chalker","doi":"10.1038/s41893-025-01586-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41893-025-01586-w","url":null,"abstract":"Gold plays an essential role in the global economy and has wide applications in various industrial technologies. Currently, the gold supply relies heavily on mining processes that employ toxic substances such as cyanide salts and mercury metal, leading to substantial environmental pollution. Gold extraction approaches that do not rely on cyanide and mercury are needed to improve the overall sustainability of gold production. Here we develop an approach for gold leaching and recovery from ore and electronic waste. This approach first uses trichloroisocyanuric acid, activated by a halide catalyst, to oxidatively dissolve gold metal from ore and electronic waste, and then applies a polysulfide polymer sorbent to selectively bind gold from the leachate. The gold can be recovered in high purity by pyrolysing or depolymerizing the sorbent. The efficacy of this approach in gold extraction was validated using ore, electronic waste and other gold-containing waste. Overall, this work provides a viable approach to achieve greener gold production from both primary and secondary resources, improving the sustainability of the gold supply. Gold has a vital role in human society and the global economy, but its production currently causes high levels of environmental pollution. This work reports an approach that can effectively produce gold from both primary and secondary resources without the use of toxic substances such as mercury or cyanide.","PeriodicalId":19056,"journal":{"name":"Nature Sustainability","volume":"8 8","pages":"947-956"},"PeriodicalIF":27.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145122840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chunhong Li, Weiping Wang, Albert Solé-Ribalta, Javier Borge-Holthoefer, Bin Jia, Zhiyuan Liu, Bin Yu, Ziyou Gao, Jianxi Gao
{"title":"Adaptive capacity for multimodal transport network resilience to extreme floods","authors":"Chunhong Li, Weiping Wang, Albert Solé-Ribalta, Javier Borge-Holthoefer, Bin Jia, Zhiyuan Liu, Bin Yu, Ziyou Gao, Jianxi Gao","doi":"10.1038/s41893-025-01575-z","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41893-025-01575-z","url":null,"abstract":"As extreme weather events enhanced by climate change pose challenges to the resilience of critical infrastructure, the ability to handle disruptions, avoid tipping points, adapt and transform in crises becomes essential. Despite advances in resilience research, there is a need to improve empirical evidence and mathematical models to quantify the systems’ adaptive capabilities to extreme climate-related phenomena, such as floods. This research fills this gap by integrating an agent-based multimodal traffic functional model with a compound failure model to provide valuable insights into adaptation patterns (that is, mode shift and route switching) and risk mitigation in response to flood-related disruptions. The proposed modelling approach not only quantifies the recovery and adaptive capacity against failures, going beyond traditional resilience analyses, but also unveils the key factors that drive adaptation of transportation to flood-induced disasters. These factors include variations in trip demand and network density, which together reveal a universal law of mode shift. The study provides valuable insights into the design of resilient and sustainable critical infrastructure systems, such as transportation, energy and communication systems capable of withstanding severe flood events while maintaining their functionality. Extreme weather events will require resilient and adaptive critical infrastructure. This study models adaptive transitions in collective travel behaviour during flood events across different cities to quantify recovery and adaptive learning from failures and reveal adaptation drivers.","PeriodicalId":19056,"journal":{"name":"Nature Sustainability","volume":"8 7","pages":"741-752"},"PeriodicalIF":27.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145122926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Piyush Mehta, Marc Muller, Meredith T. Niles, Kyle Frankel Davis
{"title":"Child diet diversity and irrigation expansion in the global south","authors":"Piyush Mehta, Marc Muller, Meredith T. Niles, Kyle Frankel Davis","doi":"10.1038/s41893-025-01584-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41893-025-01584-y","url":null,"abstract":"Irrigation expansion has been promoted as a way to improve global nutrition and health by increasing food production and income. However, its impact on the health and nutrition of local communities is unclear and might vary substantially across contexts, depending on who reaps the benefits and how. Here we combine georeferenced survey data from 9,144 rural communities (70,817 households) across 26 global south countries with data on global patterns of irrigation infrastructure changes to examine linkages between irrigation expansion and local changes in child diet diversity—a key indicator of micronutrient intake and development. We found a positive link between irrigation and child diet diversity, with substantial regional differences. Irrigation benefits were concentrated in regions without sufficient water resources to support it, suggesting trade-offs between dietary improvements and water stress. By contrast, irrigated areas with sufficient water tend to produce higher fractions of cash crops and export-oriented food items, with weaker associations to improved local diets. These findings suggest that while irrigation access is associated with overall improvements of child diet diversity in rural communities, water stress conditions can influence these outcomes. Nutrition-sensitive strategies thus need to be considered as an essential component of sustainable irrigation planning in the future. Irrigation is an important component of agricultural productivity, but its influence on health and nutritional outcomes—especially those of children—remains unclear. This study examines the links between irrigation expansion and child diet diversity across 26 countries in the global south.","PeriodicalId":19056,"journal":{"name":"Nature Sustainability","volume":"8 8","pages":"905-913"},"PeriodicalIF":27.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145122961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}