Sub-Saharan Africa’s energy transition is not just a climate story; it’s also an economic one. For millions of people across the continent, electrification means gaining access to energy services for the first time. However, financing that transition remains a challenge;...
The energy transition depends crucially on firms' incentives and abilities to develop new, cleaner technologies. Our research shows that mergers and acquisitions can help carbon-intensive, “dirty” firms break with established innovation trajectories by acquiring and building on clean technologies, offering...
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...
Every two years, the ETH Energy Science Center hosts a summer school about energy. This year, the focus was “navigating the transition in an insecure world”. Energy Blog editors Lingxi Tang and Jonathan Peel were among the 60 attending researchers...
