Dear Colleagues,

The concept of Sustainable Energy Artificial Islands (SEAI) is, nowadays, proposed as an optimised sustainable energy mega-system to enhance the sustainability and resilience of the environment. The recent communications of international and national centres of decision define their strong resolve to quickly and efficiently respond to the climate and environmental-related challenges that are this generation’s defining task. This is a new growth strategy that aims to transform countries into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050, where the environment and health of citizens are protected, and where economic growth is decoupled from resource use. A sustainable globe requires significant investment efforts across all sectors of the economy and, in particular, in sustainable energy. Aiming to successfully reach the 2030 climate and energy targets, including at least 40% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions with reference to 1990 levels and at least a 32% share for renewable energy, additional investments per year by 2030 will be required. Already, many countries confirmed their intention to present an impact-assessed plan to strongly increase their climate ambitions for 2030; therefore, additional investments will be necessary to achieve the broader environmental objectives that they set.

Besides the strategic decisions that need to be made to proceed toward a sustainable future in the built environment, sustainable energy technology has seen, in recent decades, very fast growth, much beyond the early stage concepts of ocean thermal energy. In addition, innovative technologies have been recently developed to store the produced sustainable energy locally; then, the energy is transferred using smart systems to improve network efficiency, which have been investigated and developed. Nowadays, there are more than 350,000 wind turbines spinning around the globe, with about 10% of them combined with alternative sustainable energy systems (photovoltaics, wave and tidal energy systems, etc.). Due to continuous technological advances, the concept of Sustainable Energy Artificial Islands (i.e., offshore wind power combined with other renewable energy sources and energy storage) seems to have recently become far more cost effective and much more widespread than expected, and energy islands are foreseen to become, during the next decade, the top source of sustainable energy generating capacity in Europe, in the USA and in Canada, and the second largest in China.

As a matter of fact, according to the experience gained in Japan, Singapore, Denmark, the UK and elsewhere, the related projects during pre-design, design, construction, maintenance and demolition have a lot of problems that need investigation, analysis, design, realisation and scientific discussion. Therefore, the proposed Special Issue is expected to be a unique forum where all the above-mentioned phenomena, difficulties, discrepancies and prospects of applications will be collected and scientifically discussed.

Prof. Dr. Charalampos Baniotopoulos
Dr. Carlos Rebelo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• imised
• conceptual design of Sustainable Energy Artificial Islands (SEAI) (shape, material, type of island)
• sustainable energy source potential (wind, wave, solar, etc.)
• modular floating systems—design, optimisation and interconnection of modules
• mooring systems
• optimised application of SEAI
• mitigation of oscillations in SEAI
• green hydrogen production and transportation
• electrical network challenges in SEAI
• construction management in SEAI projects
• sustainability analysis, LCA of SEAI
• resilience of SEAI
• maintenance of SEAI