Dear Colleagues,

The effects of climate change are encouraging actors around the world to seek a reduction of carbon footprints and to increase the production of green energy. In this context, smart energy management is attracting much attention and new options and services are opening for consumer participation such as renewable energy self-consumption, storage, demand response, and energy efficiency. This opens new frontiers to the decentralization of the energy market and revolutionizes the role that everyone, community, or stakeholder in society, will play in the new energy landscape. All this has widespread social implications because of the new forms of people-centered energy production and distribution. This new paradigm, based on cooperation, represents an innovation made possible by the successful combination of new technologies and its rooting in society through a process of changing people's behavior towards a more sustainable scenario. However, the widespread adoption of such sustainable practices and community-based models is not yet realized.

The scope of this special issue aims to illustrate, discuss, and identify key challenges in the adoption of sustainable practices and urban community-based models in our cities. This special issue invites high quality scientific manuscripts covering a wide range of topics related to smart and sustainable communities, strategic energy management, behavioral modeling, energy demand scheduling, demand profiling, smart systems management, energy optimization, green energy, social aspects for smart energy integration.

Dr. Carlos Cruz
Dr. Manuel Aleixandre
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.

• energy demand scheduling
• demand profiling
• smart systems management
• energy optimization
• green energy
• social aspects for smart energy integration