Research

Maps the climate, water and land footprints of diets in 165 countries, finding healthier diets consistently have lower impacts. Across 72 socio-demographic subgroups, each 5% gain in diet quality (AHEI) is linked to 7.7% lower emissions, and the highest-emitting group (highly educated urban men aged 15 to 34, median 5.66 kgCO2e per day) emits roughly double the lowest (2.85).

Coupling a crop source–sink model with techno-economic analysis, vertical-farmed lettuce can undercut Dutch greenhouse production costs (≈€1.67 vs €2.35/kg) under advanced but achievable light-use targets, whereas tomato stays ~12% more expensive and needs faster crop cycles and higher light-use efficiency than achieved to date.

Identifies how ocean alkalinity enhancement — a leading marine CO2 removal option — affects marine ecosystems via ecotoxicity, eutrophication and ocean acidification, and shows current life-cycle assessment models only partially capture these pathways.

Shows that demand-side drivers — not production-side efficiency gains like clinker substitution — dominate resource efficiency across the global concrete and aggregates cycle, with longer building lifespans, lower stock intensity and reuse as the key levers.

The top 10% of global consumers is disproportionately responsible for transgressing planetary boundaries, causing damages for which broader society bears the costs.

Argues that circular-economy and low-carbon strategies must be aligned to achieve a sustainable built environment, since the two can otherwise pull in different directions.

Examines how transforming European food systems towards sustainability could leave agricultural assets stranded, identifying where capital may lose value as production patterns shift.

Presents a method linking services, products and resource use to quantify how circular strategies can cut material demand across buildings, transport, electricity, machinery, furniture and appliances.

Argues that worsening ecosystem destruction will compel the UK to confront food security, framing environmental decline as a direct threat to national food supply.

Reviews the two-way relationships between global food production and the environment, showing how food systems both drive and are affected by environmental change.

Introduces an open-source approach to regionalise environmentally extended multi-regional input-output models for subnational analysis, demonstrated on EU steel circularity.

Reviews links between the obesity and climate crises, arguing they share common drivers and that some interventions could address both together.

Systematically reviews life cycle assessments of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal, finding existing studies have limited scope and often overlook environmental side-effects of large-scale deployment.

Scenario modelling of Chinese aggregate flows from 1978 to 2050 finds demand for sand, gravel and crushed stone peaked around 2015 and is now declining, opening possibilities for circular transition.

The study presents AP-AMMO, a high-resolution dataset of agricultural ammonia emissions across Europe for 17 crop groups, two grass types and six livestock types, with over 90% originating from manure and fertiliser.

Reviews how climate change affects human wellbeing and finds these impact pathways are largely excluded from integrated environment-society-economy models, with few pathways quantified or modelled.

Argues that regulating water temperatures for thermal discharges could help reconcile the competing demands of protecting freshwater biodiversity and maintaining energy security.

Argues that the potential of vertical farming is constrained by crop breeding, contending crops must be bred as carbon sinks rather than treated as sources for the approach to deliver.

The authors argue that the system boundaries used to define food systems are inconsistent and poorly specified, which undermines comparability across studies and weakens food-systems policy and accounting.

A systematic review and meta-analysis synthesising spatial correlations between carbon storage and biodiversity, examining how scale, metrics, biome and human factors shape the strength of these relationships.

Reviews beyond-GDP measurement and proposes a conceptual framework for tracking sustainable and inclusive wellbeing to support a UN initiative on metrics beyond GDP.

Finds that over 80% of European Union Common Agricultural Policy support flows to emissions-intensive animal products, indicating subsidies are poorly aligned with climate goals.

The authors argue that the Dublin Declaration overlooks the need to reduce industrial animal agriculture and overstates the case for sustaining current livestock production.

Presents the WISE database, the first extensive collection of beyond-GDP metrics organised by wellbeing, inclusion and sustainability dimensions to support interdisciplinary research.

A city-level analysis of China's interregional energy trade quantifies virtual water embodied in fuel and electricity transfers, revealing spatial water inequalities missed by national or provincial accounting.

Proposes a framework to guide safe and sustainable-by-design innovation, enabling early-stage assessment of the safety and sustainability of novel technologies during research and development.

Presents TRIPI, an open global dataset built from OpenStreetMap that quantifies the construction materials embedded in road, rail and parking infrastructure as a potential urban mine.

Across 1,677 Chinese cities, the study quantifies the climate opportunities and risks of improving building envelopes through renovation, replacement, electrification and fuel switching.

Argues the FAO's 1.5 degrees C roadmap for food systems is inadequate, understating the mitigation needed and the role of reducing animal-product consumption.

Tracing avoidable consumer food waste to its origin, the study finds impacts are dominated by beef, dairy, rice and wheat, with over 80% of emissions, water and land impacts arising domestically.

Develops a probabilistic framework integrating future photovoltaic demand with stock, emission and fate models to assess ecological risks, especially arsenic release, from III-V/silicon tandem solar cells.

The paper develops integrated modelling of materials and emissions in buildings and vehicles to assess how suburban sprawl lock-in could be reduced.

Using sugar as a case, the study quantifies the environmental and social opportunities of reducing intake, finding that lower sugar consumption aligns with both health targets and sustainable diets.

Commentary arguing that high-quality integrated water data for energy systems is poor and that mandatory water reporting in the energy sector is urgently needed.

Modelling the global electric vehicle battery capacity available for grid services finds that EV batteries alone could meet short-term grid storage demand as early as 2030.

Argues that flexible hydropower is important for maintaining electricity stability as China phases out coal, helping to balance variable renewable generation.

Applying the Planetary Pressure-Adjusted Human Development Index to China reveals additional north-south differences in development once environmental pressures are accounted for.

Integrates 50 years of economic and environmental data to quantify the legacy environmental footprint of manufactured capital and how past investment decisions shape present impacts.

Dietary change in high-income nations alone can deliver a substantial double climate dividend by cutting agricultural emissions and freeing land for carbon sequestration.

A shift to the EAT-Lancet planetary health diet in the EU and UK alone would almost offset production deficits from Russia and Ukraine while cutting blue water use and greenhouse gas emissions.

Diverging material footprint trends between China and the rest of the world over 2007-2012 are explained by construction- and manufacturing-associated investment.

Climate change and carbon capture and storage increase the water vulnerability of China's coal-fired power fleet, with 120-176 GW of capacity exposed to water scarcity.

A triple bottom line assessment evaluates the environmental, economic and social impacts of concentrated solar power generation in China and Europe over 2020-2050.

Links global consumption to the world's Key Biodiversity Areas, tracing how demand in one country drives land-use pressure on critical biodiversity sites elsewhere.

Assesses how the US–China trade war reshuffled global supply chains, and the short-term effect of that reallocation on greenhouse-gas emissions.

Material-related greenhouse gas emissions from residential and commercial buildings across 26 regions are evaluated to 2060, with scenarios identifying their reduction potential.

A global modelling framework analyses building energy intensity per floor area from 1971 to 2014, its link to economic development, and projects its future evolution to 2060.

Using data on 5,408 generating units, the study quantifies physical water use and virtual water transferred through China's interprovincial and seasonal electricity transmission.

Solar-powered pumped-hydro systems using rural Chinese homes' existing water wells could cut coal-based emissions, ease energy insecurity and deliver household cost savings.

The study assesses the environmental impacts of the dietary nutrition transition in emerging countries and the potential consequences of eradicating hunger there.

EU electricity carbon emissions fell from 1,198 MtCO2 in 2000 to 970 MtCO2 in 2015, driven not only by economic shifts but by profound changes in the energy system.

Incorporating regional trade data into subnational input-output analyses improves the accuracy of regional environmental footprint estimates compared with nesting national tables alone.

An assessment of energy use across the global food system, quantifying energy demand along food supply chains from production through to consumption.

A global meta-analysis compiles blue water use across electricity technologies, characterising the wide variation between sources to support water-aware decisions in the energy transition.

A spatial decomposition analysis identifies the driving forces behind household carbon emissions across Chinese regions, distinguishing the contributions of consumption, structure and other socioeconomic factors.

Dietary changes can simultaneously improve nutrition, environmental impact and animal welfare, but such win-win-win outcomes are rarely achieved, and dietary guidelines need careful revision to realise them.

A spatially-explicit multi-regional input-output model links global crop and livestock consumption to high-resolution local production hotspots, exposing where traded food demand drives localised environmental impacts.

Chinese industrial CO2 emissions made up 24.1% of global emissions in 2015; this review and meta-analysis charts their historical drivers and projects their trajectory to 2050 against policy goals.

Using a multiregional input-output framework, the study allocates shared producer-consumer responsibility for sulphur dioxide emissions and the associated biodiversity loss across Chinese provinces.

This methodological review surveys spatially-explicit input-output approaches that connect top-down national environmental accounting to local impacts, addressing the loss of spatial detail in conventional databases.

Maps China's material footprint by province and sector, showing how wealthier coastal provinces outsource material use — and its environmental damage — to poorer inland ones.

Using a trade-linked consumption-based approach, the study assesses interactions between two social Sustainable Development Goals and three environmental ones, revealing trade-offs across carbon, land and water.

A meta-analysis of power densities (electrical power per horizontal square metre) shows renewable energy systems require considerably more surface area than fossil-based generation, intensifying land-competition and visual-impact concerns in the US.

A field survey quantifies the abundance and characteristics of microplastic pollution on beaches across the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean.

Comparing five global multiregional input-output databases, the study quantifies the previously little-known uncertainty in consumption-based carbon accounts used to assign mitigation responsibility.

China's rapid build-out of non-fossil electricity carries a substantial carbon footprint in construction, transport and assembly, so pre-operation emissions partly offset the operational carbon savings.

Expansion of non-fossil electricity in China reduces the carbon emissions embodied in the country's exports, though infrastructure-related emissions partly temper the reduction.

National dietary recommendations to reduce animal-product intake would lower environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions, across most high-income nations.

Proposed a standardised method for sampling and extracting microplastics from beach sand to improve comparability between contamination studies.

Quantified the environmental, economic, and social impacts of renewable-energy feed-in tariffs and power purchase agreements in Portugal over 2000-2010.

Examined stakeholder and community expectations of a proposed mineral sands mine in rural Australia and the factors shaping how those perceptions formed.