The Nano4EARTH problem, launched by the Nationwide Nanotechnology Initiative in the USA, has recognized 4 strategic areas the place nanotechnology can take advantage of impression in addressing the local weather disaster.
When in January 2000, President Clinton introduced that nanotechnology was going to change into a nationwide precedence, the concept was to construct the foundations for an initiative that will see the convergence of numerous funding businesses, academia, the non-public sector, and federal and native governments to determine the USA on the forefront of an rising scientific self-discipline. The Nationwide Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) was created, and in December 2003, President Bush signed the twenty first Century Nanotechnology Analysis and Growth Act, allocating a beginning funds of US$3.7 billion for the next four-year interval1.
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Twenty years and $42 billion later, and nanotechnology has returned an estimate $1 trillion to the US economic system2,3, a reminder for governments and firms that, with time, scientific analysis pays dividends.
However the experience academia and the non-public sector have constructed on this interval now must be channeled into tackling an existential menace — the local weather disaster — with extra sense of urgency than it has been finished to this point. The nanotechnology group should change into extra bold of their objectives, assured of the instruments and mindset developed up to now twenty years.
For this objective, two years in the past the NNI launched a Nationwide Nanotechnology Problem on local weather change, referred to as Nano4EARTH (https://www.nano.gov/nano4EARTHWorkshop). This can be a name for motion to all the nanotechnology group. On this problem of Nature Nanotechnology, we host a Remark authored by most of the leaders of the Nano4EARTH problem that highlights 4 analysis instructions that needs to be prioritized, each in academia and in trade to maximise the impression of nanotechnology. These are: batteries and vitality storage for electrification, nanocatalysts for decabonization, nanotechnology-enabled options for interfaces, and greenhouse fuel seize and storage.
In all these areas, researchers have accrued huge elementary experience, as testified by the variety of papers revealed yearly. The aim of Nano4EARTH is to method the local weather disaster from a practical standpoint. These 4 areas have been recognized as a result of optimization of the prevailing applied sciences, by way of nanotechnology-enabled options, are certain to supply essentially the most advantages. As time is working out, the thrust isn’t a lot on creating novel elementary ideas; slightly, it’s about end-user-based downside fixing.
A latest report by the Worldwide Vitality Company says that the COP28 vitality objectives can nonetheless be achieved by “tripling renewable vitality capability, doubling the speed of vitality effectivity progress and considerably decreasing methane emissions from fossil fuels” by 20304. For developed international locations, the report particularly mentions electrification of light-vehicles, carbon seize, use and storage applied sciences for hard-to-abate industrial sectors (akin to cement manufacturing) and low-emission fuels as key benchmarks. These benchmarks are consistent with the precedence areas of Nano4EARTH.
However what can nanotechnology convey to the desk?
Nanotechnology has shaped and fostered a era of scientists who’ve internalized the important parts which might be wanted for this grand societal problem. These converse of interdisciplinarity: bridging between disciplinary silos, creating a typical jargon; and elementary understanding: linking the atomic and molecular scale to macroscopic properties, creating instruments that permit for engineering novel materials properties and enhance effectivity from the bottom up. It’s now time to take this experience to a much bigger and extra bold area; to incorporate environmental scientists, economists, social scientists, coverage makers, entrepreneurs, and enterprise capitalists into the dialog about ‘nano’; to make supplies which might be sustainable-by-design, develop applied sciences which might be intrinsically scalable — not essentially essentially the most environment friendly ones; to work on drop-in options to retrofit present industrial crops.
We have now argued for a while that counting the variety of citations may not be the simplest strategy to measure the impression of utilized analysis5. Maybe we must always reward the potential for greenhouse fuel emission discount.
