Dear Readers,2020 has been a year that none of us will forget. From the early reports of an outbreak of a mysterious and deadly lung disease at the twilight of 2019 to a full‐blown, once‐in‐a‐generation global pandemic that has cost over one million lives worldwide, 2020 has been a confusing, challenging and confronting year for all. As the economies of countries all over the world went into lockdown to help slow the spread of the disease now known as COVID‐19, and the world‐economy slumped into deep recession, we at Wiley and Advanced Sustainable Systems drew together in the new normal determined to serve our research community. With the Wiley editorial staff having successfully transitioned to working from home, it quickly became obvious that work in the research community and the desire to disseminate high‐impact research was as high as ever, if not higher. Submissions to Advanced Sustainable Systems doubled in 2020 compared to the previous year. The continued strong growth of published articles demonstrates that Advanced Sustainable Systems has become a well‐established high‐quality journal for researchers with a focus on sustainability.Early research indicates that SARS‐CoV‐2 (the coronavirus causing COVID‐19) had its likely origin in wild animals. Such animals are increasingly coming into contact with humans as their natural habitats are being destroyed by humans. As with climate change, zoonotic pathogens (e.g. viruses or bacteria that infect animals and that have mutated and jumped to human hosts) are a direct consequence of humankind's excesses. Our unsustainable way of living, of doing business, of making and distributing goods, comes with severe consequences.This natural catastrophe represents an opportunity to radically shift and reset our focus. The technology to tackle most sustainability issues, as spelled out in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), already exists, but we require a mighty political, societal and financial effort to employ it to full effect. We must take responsibility and double down on our sustainability efforts.At its inception in 2017, Advanced Sustainable Systems aimed to advance the common goal of sustainable living. The journal is a reflection on, and the product of, the need of the scientific community for a high‐impact journal specializing in sustainability and sustainable technologies research. As we enter our fifth year of publication, 2020 has truly propelled this journal from infancy straight to adulthood. Over the last four years, this journal and our community of authors has grown, reflected by the number of published articles, a near tripling year on year over the last year alone, and we anticipate Volume 5 becoming our biggest volume yet. Our efforts to establish Advanced Sustainable Systems as a premium journal for outstanding research on sustainable technologies is demonstrated by our first ever impact factor, a 2019 Impact Factor of 4.869 (Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2020)). Without the outstanding contributions from our authors, this would not have been possible, and we would like to express our most sincere gratitude to our authors for choosing to publish in Advanced Sustainable Systems.It is also not too surprising that our most accessed articles in 2020 are those covering sustainable development goals (SDGs) on sustainable food and agriculture, ecology and urban development, and sustainable living (SDGs 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14 and 15). Specific topics include, for instance: water purification membranes (article number 1900114), circular waste management (article number 2000023) and lithium battery recycling (article number 1900088).Biomass and biofuels have received increased attention globally as a sustainable alternative of fossil fuels. We have organized a special issue on “Catalytic Technologies for Renewable Biomass Conversion” guest‐edited by Prof. Longlong Ma (Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, China) and Prof. Bert F. Sels (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium). Various aspects of biomass conversion and utilization are featured with an emphasis on the catalytic hydrogenolysis for transformation of biomass feedstock to fuel additives, chemicals, and polymer building blocks.One important part of sustainable development is the transition to renewable energy conversion and storage technologies. One of our upcoming 2021 special issues will focus on this topic and showcase sustainable materials for solar energy conversion and storage.Recognizing the recent advances in the area of green electronics, Clara Santato (University of Montreal, Canada), Lan Yin (Tsinghua University, China), Maria Holuszko (University of British Columbia, Canada) and Mihai Irimia‐Vladu (JKU, Austria) are guest‐editing two special issues that will be published in Advanced Materials Technologies and Advanced Sustainable Systems this year. The two parallel special issues will cover all aspects of green electronics, such as materials and technologies for more sustainable electronic devices, their environmental impact, and life cycle analyses.The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated structural change, is set to upend entire industries, and has already shifted paradigms the world over. However, we need to move forward sustainably, as we cannot go back to our old ways. Sustainability goals can be met through technology‐driven advancement, and Advanced Sustainable Systems plays a major part in this by publishing high‐quality research results furthering the advancement of sustainable living.Towards the end of last year, we simplified the submission and transfer process for authors. All Advanced and Small journals and most of their sister journals now have a single concise set of article types. The most notable change is the discontinuation of the article types “Communication” and “Full Paper”, which are replaced by “Research Article” and can contain original research studies of any length. More information on the article types can be found here, specifically under “Article Types”. We believe this is a significant step towards making life easier for our authors, readers and reviewers as it greatly reduces the need for formatting in general and reformatting after transfer to a sister journal. It also brings us one step closer to free‐format submissions. This initiative is part of a global project across Wiley and you will see similar changes to Wiley's complete portfolio of journals. It underlines the efforts Wiley is undertaking to make life easier for researchers when preparing, submitting and reading manuscripts.We would like to thank all our colleagues and board members at Advanced Sustainable Systems. And to all our readers, we wish you a healthy and successful 2021.Yours sincerely,Aron Urbatsch on behalf of the editorial teamEditorAdvanced Sustainable Systems