Talk:Timeline of sustainable energy research 2020 to the present

Candidate entries, selection and summaries
Below you can find a number of entries which could be relevant for adding them to the timelines. Please comment if you think they should or shouldn't be added. You could also add proposed additions here if you aren't sure / willing to add it to the list directly.

Furthermore, rather than having items about individual studies subsections could summarize developments in a specific field if there was progress, maybe in such cases we could also just add items about scientific reviews or replace multiple items with one item about such. Not all sections need to necessarily consist of (or only of) a list of items about significant studies. (They could also describe the recent history / developments more broadly.)

Additionally it would be good to develop more formal inclusion criteria even though the small number of items currently doesn't really warrant that or is in need for such. I formalized some similar criteria at Talk:2020 in science.


 * Candidate entries


 * (Hydrogen) Researchers develop a single molecule that can absorb sunlight from the entire visible spectrum for the production of the fuel hydrogen, harnessing more than 50% more solar energy than current solar cells can.
 * (Timeline of solar cells) Scientists report the development of perovskite electrochemical cells which can efficiently convert electricity and water into hydrogen and back.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 19:59, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

System integration studies
I am sure not if this topic fits within the purpose of this article, but I would suggest a section on system integration studies. By that I mean studies that investigate pathways to netzero or lightly carbonnegative energy systems by 2050 say and collectively assess a range of technologies and measures. These studies take the basic parameters of the technologies listed in this article, plus speculative policy measures and potential social changes, and test how these all work together projected forward. There are, of course, a number of heroic assumptions required, particularly around future costs and technological learning rates. But nonetheless, treating the system as a system should add insight. If this theme is added to the article, a number of strands might apply:


 * the upcoming IPCC Working Group III AR6 report on mitigation (due March 2022) and the chapter on energy systems
 * consortium models like TIMES
 * open energy system models (and I note the recent link to open energy system models)

I believe that these studies do fall within the ambit sustainable energy research but will leave it to others to make that call.

If appropriate, I can contribute material. Best, RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 20:29, 7 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I recently thought about adding a section for "feasibility studies" but haven't added such so far. That's partly because I don't think there's any item to add to it thus far. The only candidate item I have for such a section is:
 * "Full energy sector transition towards 100% renewable energy supply: Integrating power, heat, transport and industry sectors including desalination"
 * Another example I wouldn't include and from 2019 here.
 * Furthermore, I'd like to keep the inclusion criteria fairly high and orient broadly by the criteria I mostly described at Talk:2021 in science. These don't apply 1:1 here and aren't essential in terms of not having any exceptions or deviations. One main criteria I attempted to apply to this timeline is that items are about a scientific peer-reviewed study or a similar scientific event and were picked up by some separate WP:RS news outlet (if you can't find it via search engine try the altmetrics button of https://scienceopen.com).
 * If the items you'd like to add are notable, not too many (compared to the solar power section) and fit these two criteria please go ahead and them. If not, you could add them anyway (they could still be removed and discussed afterwards) or list them as candidate items here. Thanks for taking the time thinking about how the article could be improved!
 * Oh and the IPCC report would definitely fit the inclusion criteria, things that are about economics not so much except if they are about the tools for economic calculations or other more meta-level scientific-technical things. So the latter two of your examples would probably also be eligible as they're not about e.g. economic current-context calculation results as measured in some currency but about modelling-tech. The problem with such models is that there's many so for example something that could be included would be a review of many different models or some expert authority describing the latest state about which models are most useful for which purposes or something like that (but not e.g. some possibly significant update to your favorite model).
 * I'm waiting for some results of this to add to the timeline if appropriate (or something similar), if you have some insights about that or related relevant items that were picked up by the media / are highly significant please let me know.
 * --Prototyperspective (talk) 23:19, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree this article really needs inclusion criteria based on coverage in secondary sources. A lot of it is based on primary sources. I'll tag it as such. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 23:56, 5 March 2023 (UTC)