Low-carbon fuels are essential where direct electrification is difficult, especially in aviation, shipping and the chemical industry. But they are not automatically clean, cheap or secure. Their climate benefit and supply depend on where they are produced, which electricity powers...
Solar panels today cost less than a thousandth of what they did in the 1970s, while nuclear power plants costs have largely remained constant. This massive difference in cost trajectories is not random; but can be explained by learning rates....
Cars are responsible for a major and growing share of CO₂ emissions in Switzerland, and the country has just missed its goal of increasing the share of plug-in vehicles to 50% by 2025. Yet there seems to be no comprehensive...
What did the global clean energy market look like in 2025? How will it evolve, and who are the main players? This post is based on a talk by Timur Gül, Chief Energy Technology Officer at the International Energy Agency...
Clean energy transitions depend on more than technology and costs. Public debate, media coverage, and political signaling shape how new energy technologies are perceived and adopted. This blog post looks at three crucial recent examples to illustrate how public narratives...
Coffee producers depend on reliable power for processing and irrigation, yet many rural farms remain off-grid and exposed to volatile diesel prices. A master’s project at ETH Zurich’s Power Systems Laboratory explores this challenge through the world’s first large-scale agriphotovoltaics...
Densification is hailed as the key to the sustainable transformation of our cities. However, its implementation through the pursuit of “building new and better” is actually hurting the environment more. Our latest study reveals flaws in the sustainability of modern,...
Switzerland’s energy transition is accelerating, but planners and analysts have long faced fragmented or incomplete data on how rooftop photovoltaics, heat pumps, batteries, and electric vehicles may spread across the country. Our recent publication introduces a new open dataset that...
In discussions about the net-zero energy transition, many sectors are often labelled “hard-to-abate”—but what does that really mean? The term has no agreed definition, leading it to be applied loosely and potentially be used as an excuse to delay decarbonization...
Green and white roofs are sustainable solutions for reducing urban heat and improving building energy performance. When combined with photovoltaic (PV) systems, they are often promoted as technologies that also enhance solar energy yield. However, our comprehensive analysis reveals that...
While technologies to trap and store CO2 underground may give a license to fossil fuels to survive in a net-zero emissions world, in this opinion piece we argue that this is economically irrational and a risky gamble, calling for clear...
Dr. Iryna Doronina Senior Researcher at ETH in collaboration with PLUS, for the first time in Ukraine, mapped all energy infrastructure in Ukraine (more than 1700 units), identified energy sector damages and calculated detailed renewable energy potential by region, using...
In Switzerland, the potential of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology to integrate renewable electricity is huge, and by using batteries that already exist in electric vehicles, V2G is also more sustainable than producing new batteries for grid-scale storage. However, V2G technology is...
Fusion energy promises an abundant source of clean and safe electricity. With billions of dollars already invested, we have been making unprecedented progress towards making fusion energy a reality. But what is it exactly, what’s the current status, and what...
