Editorial pubs.acs.org/EF
Energy & Fuels in 2013
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The global energy system is an intricate transformation of primary resources into end-use applications. A multicomponent array of primary resources, including petroleum, natural gas, coal, biomass, nuclear, wind, solar, and other renewable resources, serve the needs of the transportation, industrial, commercial/residential, and electric power end sectors and users. While the quantitative details of this system will evolve over time, it is anticipated that no single resource will dominate and all will be in play for decades to come. This energy system is supported by research involving a number of science and engineering areas, policy, ethics, business, economics, and other intellectual disciplines. Energy & Fuels has traditionally served the “chemical” subset of these disciplines, while the remaining disciplines have been wellserved by other scholarly journals. One result of Energy & Fuels’ recent strategic planning exercise is to optimize its topical coverage to target the Energy & Fuels community, which will inevitably consist of a subset of the disciplines having a general interest in energy research. We are, therefore, consciously optimizing the scope of Energy & Fuels to allow authors and readers to recognize Energy & Fuels as an important source for the latest research developments impacting the energy system as a whole. Energy & Fuels thus publishes reports of research emphasizing the overlap of chemistry and chemical engineering with all areas of non-nuclear energy sources, including the formation of, exploration for, and production of fossil fuels and biomass; the properties and structure or molecular composition of raw fuels and refined products; the chemistry involved in the processing and utilization of fuels, ranging from catalysis to issues of efficiency and sustainability; chemical processes related to and applications of fuel cells; energy storage; and the analytical and instrumental techniques used in investigations of these foregoing areas. Both fundamental and applied research topics are welcome. Research on substances other than fuels whose goal is to elucidate some aspect of fuel chemistry is welcome, as well as papers dealing with the chemistry of photochemical fuel and energy production. Papers that contain no results of interest to the chemistry and chemical engineering communities, such as some nuclear or wind energy topics that are served by other prominent journals or those solely covering process economics, will not be considered for publication. Papers focusing on combustion engine technology are discouraged. In this way, we anticipate that Energy & Fuels will serve the vital and growing community of scientists, engineers, and policy experts involved in energy-related fields by publishing fully vetted, reliable, and high-quality research results in the technical area defined by the intersection of the disciplines of chemistry and chemical engineering and the application domain of energy and fuels.
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
Michael T. Klein, Editor
© 2013 American Chemical Society
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Published: January 17, 2013 1
dx.doi.org/10.1021/ef301996v | Energy Fuels 2013, 27, 1−1
