The peer-reviewed study found that electricity serving primary needs, such as heating or lighting, ultimately costs three times more than electricity for tertiary needs such as long-distance mobility — mostly due to taxation policies.

Further highlighting the ongoing social inequalities of fuel and related policies, the findings also demonstrate within the European Union (EU), the wealthiest 1% of all its population is responsible for 66% of the distance currently travelled by air. In fact, air travel is almost non-existent for 50%, and even quite limited for 90% of EU citizens the paper shows.

This 90% of people, therefore, emit less than 0.1 ton of CO₂ equivalent emissions per person, per year. Meanwhile the top 1% emit more than 22 tons per person/year.

Dr Jean-Baptiste Jarin, from the TREE laboratory (Energy and Environment Transitions) at the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour, who carried out the research, used France as an example of current and future electricity use as a basis for similar countries worldwide — especially across Europe. And although based on EU regulations applied to France, the methodology and conclusions of this study can be transposed to other countries, and to other energy carriers based on electricity, such as hydrogen.

To evaluate the impacts of these electricity tax schemes and final prices, he collected data on electricity consumption for primary (household), secondary (electric vehicle local mobility) and tertiary (e-fuel long distance mobility) needs, and then compared electricity prices, before and after taxation.

Results demonstrate:

• Electricity serving household and local mobility needs cost 194 €/Mwh (euros per megawatt-hour). This was three times more than e-fuel (synthetic sustainable aviation fuels, that are renewable jet fuels produced from fossil-free electricity and recycled carbon dioxide) for aviation — 65.5 €/Mwh.
• Tax policies accounted for 120 €/Mwh of this cost in the case of household and local mobility fuel needs but only 11.2 €/Mwh in the case of aviation.
• Electro-intensive facilities that produce aviation e-fuel benefit from little or no taxation, and jet fuel is also untaxed.
• A round trip by air between Paris and New York for one person, when using this low carbon (which is designed to be more eco-friendly) e-fuel, still requires 7,300 kWh — exceeding the total annual primary and secondary needs (5,000 kWh) of an individual.

The European Union recently introduced the obligation to incorporate e-fuels for aviation as soon as 2030. In the UK, this obligation is as soon as 2028; in-line with its Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations Order 2024.

Dr Jarin has 25 years of experience in the aviation industry, prior to his career in academia. He recommends to key policymakers that ahead of any transformational policies and strategies, aimed at achieving low emissions in aviation, provisions should be made to “not interfere with energy justice.”

Additionally, he indicates that future taxation rates should become proportional to the final purpose of the energy, and this principle should be a “pillar of energy justice.”

Commenting, Dr Jarin says: “As e-fuel, along with other energy carriers based on electricity, is still within its infancy, it’s time for policy-makers to address the potential social injustices which may arise when formulating e-fuel policies.

“Electricity for basic needs such as heating or cooking benefits everyone but using it for air mobility mostly benefits the upper classes. Taxation rates should be proportional to the final purpose of the energy, and policies should drive not only production but also consumption, within a distributive justice perspective.”

Dr Jarin adds: “And that is what I find most worrying about the findings from within my paper, that, essentially, low carbon policies could foster energy injustice to people across society.

“Sadly, a massive production of e-fuel — especially when dedicated to aviation — could mean that tax inequalities, along with volume inequalities, spread the gap between the very wealthiest and the rest. That is why policy makers need to pay close attention.

“I feel that most people perhaps do not yet understand that energy, and therefore electricity, especially when low carbon, is not gifted!

“In the Global South, but also within the EU, during winters of 2022 and 2023, electricity bills were so high in most EU countries that people had to — and even were asked to by some — reduce heating and other appliances consumptions.”

Limitations of the paper include that while all EU countries follow the same tax directive on energies, the focus is limited to France and since electricity prices in Europe vary for each country, the results, when expressed in €/MWh, could be slightly different.

Also, carbon tax and redistribution mechanisms are not addressed in this study, and “where to tax within the value chain remains an important issue,” Dr Jarin adds.

“This,” Dr Jarin says, “is a particularly important issue as low carbon electricity with high load factor is a must to produce e-fuel.

“As such, the EU has significant assets to become a potential producer, rather than a potential importer.”

Researchers at Indiana University and Wuhan University in China have unveiled a groundbreaking chemical process that could streamline the development of pharmaceutical compounds, chemical building blocks that influence how drugs interact with the body. Their study, published in Chem, describes a novel light-driven reaction that efficiently produces tetrahydroisoquinolines, a group of chemicals that play a crucial role in medicinal chemistry.

Tetrahydroisoquinolines serve as the foundation for treatments targeting Parkinson’s disease, cancer, and cardiovascular disorders. These compounds are commonly found in medications such as painkillers and drugs for high blood pressure, as well as in natural sources like certain plants and marine organisms.

Traditionally, chemists have relied on well-established but limiting methods to synthesize these molecules. The new research, co-authored by Kevin Brown, the James F. Jackson Professor of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, and Professors Xiaotian Qi, Wang Wang, and Bodi Zhao of Wuhan University, presents a fundamentally different approach.

How It Works: Light as a Chemical Tool

Instead of using traditional chemical reactions, scientists harness light to trigger a process called photoinduced energy transfer, wherein light initiates a controlled reaction between sulfonylimines (a type of chemical compound) and alkenes (another type of compound), leading to the creation of tetrahydroisoquinolines — a type of complex molecule. This method allows for the development of new structural patterns in the molecules, which were previously difficult or impossible to create using other methods, offering a more efficient way to make complex molecules.

“The key innovation in this study is the use of a light-activated catalyst, a special molecule that speeds up the reaction without being used up itself,” said Professor Brown. “Traditional methods require high temperatures or strong acids — like trying to cook food with a blowtorch instead of a stove. These harsh conditions can sometimes create unwanted side reactions, or make the process less useful for certain chemicals. The new process, however, uses molecules that respond to light, and can bypass heating by access new energy states. This makes the reaction cleaner, more efficient, and less likely to create unwanted byproducts.”

Brown and colleagues also found that tiny changes in the location of electrons within the starting materials had a huge impact on how the reaction played out — akin to if these electrons were puzzle pieces that needed to fit together just right. By tweaking the shapes of these pieces, the scientists made sure that only the desired product was formed, making the process highly selective. This is crucial for making medicines, where even a small mistake in a molecule’s structure can turn a helpful drug into something useless or even harmful.

Implications for Medicine and Other Industries

“The ability to create a wider range of tetrahydroisoquinoline-based molecules means that medicinal chemists can now explore new drug candidates for treating diseases like Parkinson’s, certain types of cancer, and heart conditions,” noted Professor Qi. “Right now, some diseases have very few effective treatment options, and this method could help scientists discover new and better drugs more quickly.”

Beyond pharmaceuticals, this research could also impact other industries that rely on fine chemicals. In agriculture, for example, similar chemical reactions could be used to develop more effective pesticides or fertilizers. In materials science, it could help create new synthetic materials with specific properties, such as better durability and longevity and greater resistance to heat for the aerospace, automotive, electronics, and medical industries.

The researchers plan to fine-tune the reaction conditions, meaning, they will experiment with different ingredients and settings to make the improve the process further. They also aim to find out if this method can work on even more types of molecules, expanding its usefulness. In addition, they hope to partner with pharmaceutical companies to test whether this technique can be used to produce medicines, potentially leading to new drug discoveries that could make a difference in people’s lives.

“This approach gives chemists a powerful new tool,” said Professor Brown. “We hope especially it will open the door to the development of new and improved therapies for patients around the world.”

As the field of photochemistry continues to expand, innovations like this may redefine how medicines and essential chemicals are made, paving the way for faster, cleaner, and more efficient production methods.

With computer assistance, the researchers assembled these fragments like puzzle pieces to compile the entire genome. It was only then that they realised they were dealing with a previously unknown group of archaea.

Like bacteria, archaea are single-celled organisms. Genetically, however, there are significant differences between the two domains, especially regarding their cell envelopes and metabolic processes.

After a further search, microbiologists identified the corresponding organisms, described them and classified them as a separate archaeal sub-group: Asgard archaea. Their name, taken from the heavenly realm in Norse mythology, references their initial discovery close to Loki’s Castle — a black smoker on the mid-Atlantic ridge between Norway and Svalbard.

In fact, Asgard archaea appeared almost heaven-sent for research: they turned out to be a missing link between archaea and eukaryotes — that is, between archaea and organisms whose cells contain a nucleus, such as plants and animals.

Tree of life with one branch fewer

In recent years, researchers have found growing indications of close links between Asgard archaea and eukaryotes, and that the latter may have evolved from the former. The division of all living organisms into the three domains of bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes did not hold up to this surprising discovery.

Some researchers have since proposed regarding eukaryotes as a group within Asgard archaea. This would reduce the number of domains of life from three to two: archaea, including eukaryotes, and bacteria.

At ETH Zurich, Professor Martin Pilhofer and his team are fascinated by Asgard archaea and have examined the mysterious microbes for several years.

In an article published in Nature two years ago, the ETH researchers explored details of the cellular structure and architecture of Lokiarchaeum ossiferum. Originating in the sediments of a brackish water channel in Slovenia, this Asgard archaeon was isolated by researchers in Christa Schleper’s laboratory at the University of Vienna.

In that study, Pilhofer and his postdoctoral researchers Jingwei Xu and Florian Wollweber demonstrated that Lokiarchaeum ossiferum possesses certain structures also typical of eukaryotes. “We found an actin protein in that species that appears very similar to the protein found in eukaryotes — and occurs in almost all Asgard archaea discovered to date,” says Pilhofer.

In the first study, the researchers combined different microscopy techniques to demonstrate that this protein — called Lokiactin — forms filamentous structures, especially in the microbes’ numerous tentacle-like protrusions. “They appear to form the skeleton for the complex cell architecture of Asgard archaea,” adds Florian Wollweber.

In addition to actin filaments, eukaryotes also possess microtubules. These tube-shaped structures are the second key component of the cytoskeleton and are comprised of numerous tubulin proteins. These tiny tubes are important for transport processes within a cell and the segregation of chromosomes during cell division

The origin of these microtubules has been unclear — until now. In a newly published article in Cell , the ETH researchers discovered related structures in Asgard archaea and describe their structure. These experiments show that Asgard tubulins form very similar microtubules, albeit smaller than those in their eukaryotic relatives.

However, only a few Lokiarchaeum cells form these microtubules. And, unlike actin, these tubulin proteins only appear in very few species of Asgard archaea.

Scientists do not yet understand why tubulins appear so rarely in Lokiarchaea, or why they are needed by cells. In eukaryotes, microtubuless are responsible for transport processes within the cell. In some cases, motor proteins “walk along” these tubes. The ETH researchers have not yet observed such motor proteins in Asgard archaea.

“We have shown, however, that the tubes formed from these tubulins grow at one end. We therefore suspect that they perform similar transport functions as the microtubules in eukaryotes,” says Jingwei Xu, the co-first author of the Cell study. He produced the tubulins in a cell culture with insect cells and examined their structure.

Researchers from the fields of microbiology, biochemistry, cell biology and structural biology collaborated closely on the study. “We would never have progressed so far without this interdisciplinary approach,” emphasises Pilhofer with a degree of pride.

Was the cytoskeleton essential for the development of complex life? While some questions remain unanswered, the researchers are confident that the cytoskeleton was an important step in the evolution of eukaryotes.

This step could have occurred aeons ago, when an Asgard archaeon entwined a bacterium with its appendages. In the course of evolution, this bacterium developed into a mitochondrion, which serves as the powerhouse of modern cells. Over time, the nucleus and other compartments evolved — and the eukaryotic cell was born.

“This remarkable cytoskeleton was probably at the beginning of this development. It could have enabled Asgard archaea to form appendages, thereby allowing them to interact with, and then seize and engulf a bacterium,” says Pilhofer.

Fishing for Asgard archaea

Pilhofer and his colleagues now plan to turn their attention to the function of actin filaments and archaeal tubulin along with the resulting microtubules.

They also aim to identify the proteins that researchers have discovered on the surface of these microbes. Pilhofer hopes his team will be able to develop antibodies precisely tailored to these proteins. This would enable researchers to “fish” specifically for Asgard archaea in mixed microbe cultures.

“We still have a lot of unanswered questions about Asgard archaea, especially regarding their relation to eukaryotes and their unusual cell biology,” says Pilhofer. “Tracking down the secrets of these microbes is fascinating.”