Despite sustained economic and industrial growth, modern economies remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels and their derivatives for energy and primary industrial feedstocks. These inputs continue to underpin manufacturing systems across sectors.
Reducing this dependence requires materials and processes that outperform conventional technologies on efficiency, cost, and scalability. Nanotechnology offers this potential through its unique physical and chemical characteristics, enabling performance gains that are difficult to achieve with established materials.
Nanomaterials support improvements in energy storage, industrial efficiency, and emissions reduction. They enable products and processes that are energy-efficient, economically viable, and environmentally sustainable across multiple value chains.
This article examines key technological breakthroughs in nanotechnology and the high-potential application areas shaping its role in climate mitigation. It highlights how these innovation pathways can accelerate emissions reduction and reduce dependence on fossil-based products.
Innovation landscape in nanomaterials
The innovations outlined below demonstrate how nanomaterials are being deployed to address climate challenges. By engineering materials at the nanoscale, these solutions improve efficiency, durability, and performance across energy, environmental, and industrial systems. Key applications include renewable energy generation, carbon capture, wastewater treatment, environmental remediation, and sustainable agriculture, among others.
By addressing long-standing technical and economic barriers, continued advances in nanomaterials are enabling more climate-aligned processes, products, and systems. As scientific and engineering capabilities mature, nanotechnology is positioned to play a meaningful role in delivering scalable, commercially viable solutions to climate change.
The Net Zero Insights Market Compass presents these innovation pathways in a clear, structured framework that brings clarity to the evolving nanomaterials landscape.
Innovation in nanomaterials
Nanomaterials enable products and processes that are more energy efficient, economically viable, and environmentally sustainable across multiple industries. Their applications span energy production and storage, environmental remediation, and construction-related infrastructure.
Below are high-potential nanomaterials and some of their applications that can accelerate the Net Zero transition.
Nanoparticles
Nanoparticles are nanomaterials with at least one dimension below 100 nanometres. At this scale, their high surface-area-to-volume ratio gives rise to distinct optical, electrical, magnetic, and chemical properties that are not observed in bulk materials. These characteristics enable improved reactivity, material performance, and energy efficiency across a wide range of applications.
Metal and metal-oxide nanoparticles are composed of pure metals or their oxides and exhibit enhanced catalytic, electrical, and adsorption properties at the nanoscale. They are used as high-efficiency catalysts in industrial processes, in energy storage and electronic systems, in environmental remediation and as functional additives in advanced coatings and composites.
Quantum dots are semiconductor nanocrystals, typically 2–10 nanometres in size, whose nanoscale structure gives rise to distinctive optical and electronic properties. They can be synthesised from semiconductor, metal, or carbon-based materials and are being explored to improve solar energy performance, LED efficiency, photocatalytic hydrogen production, and CO₂ conversion.
In solar applications, quantum dots can materially boost energy yield. A supply agreement between First Solar and UbiQD integrates fluorescent quantum dot technology into thin-film bifacial photovoltaic modules. At utility scale, even incremental gains in bifaciality translate into meaningful increases in output, achieved with minimal changes to existing manufacturing processes.
Carbon-based nanomaterials
Carbon-based nanomaterials exhibit exceptional electrical conductivity, thermal stability, and mechanical strength. These attributes make them relevant for improving energy storage and energy conversion technologies, including batteries, fuel cells, supercapacitors, hydrogen systems, and solar photovoltaics.
Carbon-based nanomaterials offer distinct functional advantages across energy and materials applications like:
Graphene combines high electrical conductivity with transparency and mechanical flexibility, supporting efficiency gains in batteries, supercapacitors, and thin-film solar cells. Its strength and chemical stability also enable applications in water purification and lightweight materials for energy-efficient transportation.
Carbon nanofibers are used to reinforce composite materials, reducing weight in transport and industrial structures. Their conductivity, surface area, and porosity also make them suitable for advanced energy storage devices and as catalyst supports in carbon capture and utilisation processes.
Fullerenes are hollow, cage-like carbon structures with distinctive electronic and chemical properties. They are widely explored in organic photovoltaics and materials engineering to enhance charge transport, conductivity, and mechanical performance.
Nanotubes
Nanotubes are engineered nanomaterials with distinct thermal, electrical, and mechanical properties, enabling lighter, stronger, and more energy-efficient systems. Among them, boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted significant interest due to their structural similarities and differentiated functional performance across applications.
Boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) exhibit high thermal stability and unique electro-mechanical behaviour, including the ability to generate electrical signals when liquids flow across their surface. These properties support potential use in energy harvesting, water treatment, and air purification.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are hollow, cylindrical carbon nanostructures with exceptional electrical conductivity, thermal stability, and mechanical strength. These properties position CNTs as potential substitutes for energy-intensive materials such as cement, steel, and aluminium, while also reducing reliance on imported critical materials.Â
CNTs offer strong potential in energy storage and energy conversion systems due to their large surface area and superior charge transport properties. They are used as electrode materials in batteries and as storage media for hydrogen in fuel cell applications. CNTs can also enhance solar cell efficiency by improving charge transfer and energy conversion.
Oil spill cleaning is one of several environmental applications of CNTs. CNT-based sponges enable efficient oil–water separation through strong oil adsorption, super-hydrophobicity, mechanical durability, and reusability, making them effective materials for oil recovery in water and soil systems.
Aerogels
Aerogels are nanoporous solid materials characterised by ultra-high porosity, extremely low density, and very large internal surface areas. They are among the lightest solid materials available and are increasingly deployed across construction, energy, and industrial applications.
Their nanoscale porosity and high surface-area-to-mass ratio enable high-performance thermal insulation, helping reduce energy demand for heating and cooling in buildings and industrial facilities. Their thin form factor also supports retrofitting applications, including in existing or heritage structures, without structural modification.
Beyond insulation, aerogels are being explored for advanced filtration in water treatment, environmental remediation, and gas adsorption for carbon capture. In transportation, fire-resistant aerogel materials are emerging as a breakthrough for improving electric vehicle battery safety.
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)
Metal–organic frameworks are crystalline, nanoscale materials formed by linking metal ions with organic ligands into highly ordered, porous structures. Their defining advantage lies in exceptionally high surface areas and precisely tunable pore size and chemistry, enabling strong selectivity in gas adsorption and separation.
These properties position MOFs as leading candidates for carbon capture and utilization, including post-combustion capture, selective industrial gas separation, and emerging direct air capture applications. MOFs can be engineered to preferentially bind carbon dioxide, improving capture efficiency while reducing energy requirements compared with conventional sorbents.
Nanomaterial applications
Applications of nanomaterials continue to expand as nanoscale engineering unlocks properties not achievable in conventional materials.Â
Solar energyÂ
Advances in this area include quantum dot solar cells (discussed above) and nanowire solar cells. Nanowire solar cells use nanoscale semiconductor wires to improve light absorption and charge collection, enabling higher efficiency with reduced material use. Their small dimensions give rise to properties well suited for photovoltaic applications.
Batteries
They improve battery performance by increasing energy density, charging speed, and durability. Nanostructured electrodes made from carbon nanotubes, graphene, and metal oxides provide higher surface area for charge storage. Nanoparticle additives and nanocoatings further enhance ion transport, stability, and battery lifespan.
Water treatment
Nanomaterials enable more efficient water purification and desalination processes. Key applications include nanofiltration membranes for removing salts and pollutants, and nanoadsorbents for capturing heavy metals and pathogens.
Agriculture
Nanomaterials are applied to improve productivity and resource efficiency in agriculture. Innovations include nanofertilisers for controlled nutrient delivery, nanosensors for monitoring soil and crop conditions, and nanopesticides for targeted pest control. Nanocoatings on seeds support improved germination and early-stage protection.
Carbon capture
Nanomaterials support more efficient COâ‚‚ capture through high-surface-area adsorption and selective separation. Applications include nanoporous materials such as zeolites and MOFs, nanomaterial-based membranes, and other technologies. Nanomaterials are also explored as catalysts for COâ‚‚ conversion.
Hydrogen and fuel cells
Nanomaterials enhance hydrogen production, storage, and fuel cell performance. Innovations include nanoscale catalysts that improve hydrogen generation efficiency, advanced materials such as nanotubes and MOFs for hydrogen storage, and nanostructured electrocatalysts that reduce reliance on precious metals in fuel cells.
Innovations in nanotechnology – from laboratory breakthroughs to climate solutions
Beyond the applications discussed above, nanomaterials are also used in food packaging to extend shelf life of perishable goods and in nanosensors to improve the accuracy and affordability of continuous environmental monitoring.
Regardless of application, sustained research and development remain critical to improve efficiency, affordability, and long-term sustainability. Continuous investment is especially important for a research-intensive technology where laboratory advances must be translated into reliable, scalable systems. Startups willing to take early technical risk, combined with commercial agreements that support market adoption, will be central to closing the gap between innovation and impact.
As deployment accelerates, nanotechnology can play a meaningful role in supporting global Net Zero targets by 2050 and delivering near-term emissions reductions across high-impact sectors including buildings, electricity, industry, and transportation.
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