GEI–ERA 2008, held in the delightful Mediterranean city of Genoa, was the second Joint Meeting between the two most important Italian associations for chemical science and technology, namely the Italian Chemical Society (SCI) and the Italian Association of Chemical Engineering (AIDIC). GEI–ERA 2008 was organized by the SCI Division of Electrochemistry and the AIDIC Working Party on Green Electrochemistry, which together embrace the majority of the Italian “electrochemical scientific community”.

The aim of this meeting was to foster contacts between the Italian experts involved in the fields of Energy conversion and storage, Environmental protection and remediation, Sensors and electroanalytical methodologies, and Materials science and encourage future collaborations. The conference programme included Plenary Lectures, given by international experts in the field of energy and environment, keynote lectures, oral presentations, poster sections and a prize session devoted to young and promising researchers.

As for the successful initiative of the past year in the occasion of GEI-ERA2007, this high quality Special Issue of the Journal of Applied Electrochemistry gathers the most significant contributions of the 2008 GEI-ERA edition.

As guest editor and president of the organizing committee I am profoundly indebted to all the people that contributed to the success of the meeting and to Prof. Sandra Rondinini for her help in preparing and publishing this Special Issue in which electrochemical and non-electrochemical aspects are blended to reflect the absence of discontinuities at the frontiers of science.