/  The UK Government has pledged to make the nation carbon-free by 2050. We explore five key ways the energy industry needs to change to meet the ambitious target. We also find out about the work of the Energy Data Taskforce, and ask whether meeting carbon targets could be facilitated by making data open source, allowing everyone to benefit from lessons learned.

We also speak to Moltex Energy about its stable salt reactor, which the company believes could provide a safer and cheaper alternative to traditional nuclear technologies. We also check out a new technology capable of creating hydrocarbons using just water and sunlight, created by a team of researchers at ETH Zurich, and catch up with the Advanced Clean Energy Storage project in the US, which has received a $1bn investment to build salt cavern to help store renewable energy.

Finally, we look at the areas of nuclear technology that need to be improved, catch up with the US Department of Energy’s Coal FIRST initiative and ask, what is holding smart grids back? /

Read on for all this and more, and join the conversation on Twitter. 

Molly Lempriere, editor