Perspective study: governance for C2C

This perspective study will serve as frame of reference for follow-up activities and exchanges both within and outside the Cradle to Cradle Network (C2CN) and it aims to reflect the current challenges and opportunities associated with implementing a Cradle to Cradle approach. In total, four perspective studies have been written, in the areas on industry, area spatial development, governance and on the build theme

Analysing climate action plans of selected UK cities for their SDG alignment

In UK, the Climate change Act of 2008 has placed a binding target of reducing the net carbon emission in 2050 by at least 80% compared to the 1990 baseline. With a high share of urban population, the contribution of cities and urban areas towards climate change mitigation and adaptation becomes crucial. UK being a signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2016, there is a new emphasis on the sustainability of cities as well. In this paper, a preliminary analysis of climate action initiatives of three UK cities (Bristol, Leicester and Milton Keynes) and their alignment with the SDG is presented. We used a text mining approach to analyse the climate action plans and then use this to map the alignment with the SDGs. We find that climate action plans have not focused on the sustainable development goals or the SDGs and their focus remains limited mainly to mitigation activities through promotion of renewable energies at homes and in buildings and actions on transport. However, climate action plans could influence a significant number of SDGs and an integrated approach could be beneficial for the cities and their residents

Going beyond instrument interactions: towards a more comprehensive policy mix conceptualization for environmental technological change

Reaching a better understanding of the policies and politics of transitions presents a main agenda item in the emerging field of sustainability transitions. One important requirement for these transitions, such as the move towards a decarbonized energy system, is the redirection and acceleration of technological change, for which policies play a key role. Several studies of policies supporting environmental technological change have argued for the need to combine different policy instruments in so-called policy mixes. However, existing policy mix studies often fall short of reflecting the complexity and dynamics of actual policy mixes and the underlying politics of (re)designing them. In this paper we take a first step towards a more comprehensive, interdisciplinary policy mix concept for environmental technological change based on a review of the bodies of literature on innovation studies, environmental economics and policy analysis. The concept introduces a clear terminology and consists of the three building blocks elements, processes and characteristics, which can be delineated by several dimensions. Throughout the paper, we illustrate the concept using the example of the policy mix for fostering the transition of the German energy system to renewable power generation technologies. We argue that the proposed concept provides an integrating analytical framework for empirical studies analyzing the impact of the policy mix on environmental technological change and sustainability transitions more broadly. Finally, we derive policy implications and suggest avenues for future research

Coatings in Photovoltaic Solar Energy Worldwide Research

This paper describes the characteristics of contributions that were made by researchers worldwide in the field of Solar Coating in the period 1957–2019. Scopus is used as a database and the results are processed while using bibliometric and analytical techniques. All of the documents registered in Scopus, a total of 6440 documents, have been analyzed and distributed according to thematic subcategories. Publications are analyzed from the type of publication, field of use, language, subcategory, type of newspaper, and the frequency of the keyword perspectives. English (96.8%) is the language that is most used for publications, followed by Chinese (2.6%), and the rest of the languages have a less than < 1% representation. Publications are studied by authors, affiliations, countries of origin of the authors, and H-index, which it stands out that the authors of China contribute with 3345 researchers, closely followed by the United States with 2634 and Germany with 1156. The Asian continent contributes the most, with 65% of the top 20 affiliations, and Taiwan having the most authors publishing in this subject, closely followed by Switzerland. It can be stated that research in this area is still evolving with a great international scientific contribution in improving the efficiency of solar cells

Recycling Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste: Systematic Literature Review and Bibliometric Analysis of Research Trends

The authors appreciate the support of the research group TEP-968 (Technologies for Circular Economy) of the University of Granada.The organic fraction is usually the predominant fraction in municipal solid waste, so its recycling is a potential alternative to disposal in landfill sites, as well as helping to reach targets included in the European Circular Economy Package. The existing body of knowledge in this research field is very large, so a comprehensive review of the existing scientific literature has been considered of interest to provide researchers and professionals with a detailed understanding of the status quo and predict the dynamic directions of this field. A systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis have been performed to provide objective criteria for evaluating the work carried out by researchers and a macroscopic overview of the existing body of knowledge in this field. The analysis of 452 scientific articles published from 1980 to 2019 has shown that the application of composting technologies is relevant, especially since 2014, when policies aimed at reducing emissions to the atmosphere were increased and focused on the use of this waste fraction to produce biogas. Nevertheless, the scientific field is still evolving to impose a model of a circular economy; in fact, emerging studies are being conducted on the production of biomethane, contributing to the decarbonised energy system.Research group TEP-968 (Technologies for Circular Economy) of the University of Granad

Energy transitions, sub-national government and regime flexibility : how has devolution in the United Kingdom affected renewable energy development?

We acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council for funding the research on which this paper was based (Grant Number RES-062-23-2526).Peer reviewedPostprin

Biomass as Renewable Energy: Worldwide Research Trends

The world’s population continues to grow at a high rate, such that today’s population is twice that of 1960, and is projected to increase further to 9 billion by 2050. This situation has brought about a situation in which the percentage of the global energy used in cities is increasing considerably. Biomass is a resource that is present in a variety of different materials: wood, sawdust, straw, seed waste, manure, paper waste, household waste, wastewater, etc. Biomass resources have traditionally been used, and their use is becoming increasingly important due to their economic potential, as there are significant annual volumes of agricultural production, whose by-products can be used as a source of energy and are even being promoted as so-called energy crops, specifically for this purpose. The main objective of this work was to analyze the state of research and trends in biomass for renewable energy from 1978 to 2018 to help the research community understand the current situation and future trends, as well as the situation of countries in the international context, all of which provides basic information to facilitate decision-making by those responsible for scientific policy. The main countries that are investigating the subject of biomass as a renewable energy, as measured by scientific production, are the United States, followed by China, India, Germany and Italy. The most productive institutions in this field are the Chinese Academy of Sciences, followed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet and the Ministry of Education in China. This study also identifies communities based on the keywords of the publications obtained from a bibliographic search. Six communities or clusters were found. The two most important are focused on obtaining liquid fuels from biomass. Finally, based on the collaboration between countries and biomass research, eight clusters were observed. All this is centered on three countries belonging to different clusters: USA, India and the UK

The macro-environment for liquid biofuels in the US mass media, science and government

The purpose of this study is to investigate under which dimensions the macro-environment for liquid biofuels has been structured during time, respectively by science, mass media, and government in Germany, and how these three social expressions related to each other. Research was carried out on German official government documents, mass media news, and scientific papers on the topic ‘liquid biofuels’. Text Mining was used to extract knowledge from their content. The results indicate that in configurating the macro-environment for liquid biofuels there is some degree of proximity between media and government, less between media and science, and the least between government and scienc

Discourse on climate and energy justice: a comparative study of Do It Yourself and Bootstrapped corpora

This article offers a descriptive and analytic view of the different stages leading to the constitution of a corpus that is representative of the issues of climate and energy justice. Overall, the corpus contains over five million words and gathers reports, newsletters and web-pages dealing with the most equitable ways of moving to a low-carbon future in the aim of limiting climate change. It can be divided into six sub-corpora, according to types of discourse communities, and methods of constitution. We begin by presenting the small Do It Yourself (DIY) corpora which were used as a starting point. Three discourse communities were selected to observe possible variation in their treatment of the issue: Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), United-Nation institutions, and the Renewable Energy Sector (RES). The sources are selected according to author, date, keywords in title. Using the concordance Antconc and WMatrix software we test the reliability of the corpora for their thematic content, terminology and lexical unit classification. Our first results enable us to confirm variation between the discourse communities. The discrepancy in sizes and the time-consuming nature of the initial DIY corpus constitution lead us to use BootCat to extend them, using keywords from the corpora as seeds to retrieve and download webpages. We thus contrast a more traditional approach to corpus building to web-as-corpus data gathering methods. We compare the results found in the BootCat corpora to test if they are as specific as those in the DIY corpora. This enables us to draw conclusions on the possible uses and advantages of relatively small corpora for the study of specialised discourse.Cet article décrit et analyse les différentes étapes de constitution d’un corpus représentatif des questions de justice climatique et énergétique. Le corpus contient cinq millions de mots en tout et rassemble des rapports, des lettres d’information et pages web traitant des solutions équitables à faible empreinte carbone pour limiter le changement climatique. Il est divisé en six sous-corpus selon les types de communautés de discours et de méthodes de constitution. Nous commençons par la présentation du petit corpus fait maison que nous utilisons comme point de départ. Trois communautés de discours ont été sélectionnées afin d’observer d’éventuelles variations dans leur traitement de ces questions : Organisations Non Gouvernementales, institutions onusiennes et organisations du secteur de l’énergie renouvelable. Les sources ont été sélectionnées en fonction des auteurs, dates et mots clés présents dans les titres. Grâce aux logiciels de concordance AntConc et WMatrix, nous avons testé la comparabilité de ces corpus du point de vue de leur contenu thématique, de leur terminologie et de la classification de leurs unités lexicales. Nos premiers résultats nous permettent de confirmer l’existence de variations entre communautés de discours. Le caractère chronophage de notre démarche de constitution d’un corpus « maison », ainsi que le déséquilibre entre le nombre de mots obtenus pour chaque sous-corpus nous conduisent à utiliser BootCat afin de constituer un corpus plus fourni. L’outil utilise des mots clés comme « semences » pour la récupération et le téléchargement automatiques de pages web. Nous pouvons ainsi comparer une méthodologie traditionnelle de constitution de corpus à une méthodologie qui utilise le web en tant que corpus. Nos résultats BootCat sont confrontés à ceux du corpus maison pour voir s’ils révèlent aussi bien les spécificités des sous-corpus. Cette démarche aboutit à des conclusions sur les possibles utilisations de corpus relativement petits, et d’en souligner la pertinence pour l’étude de discours spécialisés

A resource-based view of green innovation as a strategic firm resource: Present status and future directions

Green innovation could become a valuable firm resource for establishing competitive advantage while simultaneously contributing towards sustainable development; in other words, green innovation has the potential to address the dilemma between consuming available resources and preserving them for the future. However, there is a dearth of studies systematically examining the present structure and future scope of research on green innovation as a firm resource. Seeking to explain the sustainable development dilemma of green innovations through the theoretical perspective of the resource-based view of the firm, we address this gap with a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 951 relevant articles. The key contributors to the extant literature are recognised with bibliographic coupling, citation analysis and co-authorship analysis. A co-citation analysis identifies four major thematic areas of research: green supply chain management, green product design, corporate environmental responsibilities and social sustainability. Further, a dynamic co-citation analysis tracks the progression of these thematic areas. Content analysis of the thematic areas provides insights into the status of the research domain. This study also contributes to the extant literature by identifying prestigious articles on green innovation as a firm resource, analysing the co-occurrence of keywords and suggesting future research agendas.publishedVersio