PhD position Critical material sustainability and energy transition

Job description

We seek a PhD candidate who is passionate about energy and sustainability scientific problems with a focus on the critical material perspective. Successful candidate will be under supervision of Prof. Xin Sun, working with colleagues at the Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society group (IREES - ), within Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (ESRIG).

Although the clean energy technologies (e.g., solar & wind power, electric vehicles) are preferable from a decarbonization perspective, their deployment causes a surging demand of critical materials, with increasing concern of their high supply concentration, negative environmental and social impacts, by-product issues, geopolitical instability, and other unsustainable factors. There is a pressing need to tackle the challenge of coordinating the economic, environmental, and social impacts of energy-climate-material nexus.

In this context, the prop...