Special Issue "Accelerating Renewable Energy Transitions: The Enabling Role of Data-Driven Technologies in Environmental Innovations and Policy and Governance Processes"

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Economics and Policy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 July 2022.

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Simon Elias Bibri
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Computer Science and Department of Planning and Architecture, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim 7491, Norway
Interests: sustainable development; urban sustainability science; ICT of ubiquitous compu-ting; data-driven smart sustainable cities; sustainable cities (e.g., compact city, eco–city, green city, low-carbon city, symbiotic city); smart cities (e.g., real-time city, da-ta-driven city, ambient city, ubiquitous city); urban computing and intelligence for sustainability; environmental sustainability; data-driven smart solutions for envi-ronmental sustainability; integrated renewable energy and smart energy technolo-gies; environmental innovation and energy transitions; sustainability transition gov-ernance; science and technology studies; technological and sectoral innovation sys-tems; circular economy; industrial ecology; technology, innovation, and environ-mental policies
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Environmental innovation and sustainability transitions are high on the agenda of many countries, as well as the European Union (EU) and international organizations such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), the United Nations (UN), and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The corresponding aim of rapid and deep decarbonization will affect major economic sectors. The energy sector is crucial for transitioning to low-carbon societies. As variable renewable energy enters a path of sustained growth, key energy transition challenges shift toward integrating large shares of renewables together with smart energy solutions through additional flexibility and decarbonizing other key emitting sectors. However, one of the key challenges to address and overcome is how to accelerate the transition to low-carbon societies by integrating renewable energy and smart energy. This calls for radical environmental innovations, but also the massive deployment of existing renewable energy and smart energy technologies. Policy and governance have a key role to play in this rather purposive transition. This requires embracing and leveraging what big data technologies have to offer in terms of advanced analytics, enhanced decision-making processes, information flows, communication channels, and learning and coordination mechanisms. 

Energy is at the core of the aims of sustainable development. To secure a sustainable future, the energy sector needs to rapidly transform from its dependency on fossil fuels to relying on renewable energy sources. This needs to be supported by advanced ICT given its pivotal role in stimulating environmental innovations by various means. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 aims to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. A large body of work has, since the mid-2000s, demonstrated the role of advanced ICT in the transition to low-carbon societies by massively improving energy efficiency and thus reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in major economic sectors. More so, emerging data-driven technologies as a form of advanced ICT offer unsurpassed ways to accelerate such a transition thanks to the associated applied solutions for energy efficiency processes, integrated renewable solutions, as well as environmental monitoring systems. The real gains will come from the economic sectors of energy, transport, industry, and buildings given their significant contribution to global GHG emissions as a result of the huge losses, poor management, and intolerable inefficiencies associated with the operations of energy systems. The positive effects of ICT on mitigating climate change can increase significantly when smart energy is integrated with renewable energy (e.g., solar, wind, hydropower), especially through large-scale grid system development and implementation. The vision of smart energy aims to achieve energy systems that are highly energy-efficient, increasingly powered by renewable energy sources enabled by new technologies, and less dependent on fossil fuels. In the meantime, renewables continue to scale up faster than expected, and their levelized cost has come down to the point where build-out has become cheaper than fossil fuels coupled to carbon capture, storage technology, and digitalization. Smart grid technologies provide numerous benefits associated with energy management, energy conservation, cost reduction, as well as the integration of  renewable energy sources in power generation, transmission, and distribution systems. However, there are major barriers to the development of smart grids and significant challenges for their implementation that need to be addressed and overcome.

Policymakers need to identify and implement more effective mechanisms to get producers and consumers to use ICT-based climate solutions. Indeed, advanced ICT cannot act in isolation to mitigate climate change, nor can de-carbonization practices become widespread with free will. Policy is a determining factor for any societal transition. It particularly has a primary role in aligning and mobilizing diverse actors in the same direction, as well as incentivizing different types of these actors to participate actively in decisions that accelerate renewable energy transitions. These actions can occur through allocating knowledge and financial resources and making governance arrangements.

The explosive growth of data, coupled with its analytical power, has become of crucial importance to policy and governance processes thanks to evidence-based decisions, cooperative communication channels, learning and sharing mechanisms, and collective intelligence tools. These indeed are key drivers of accelerating renewable energy transitions. The outcome of big data analytics can be used as the evidence base for formulating policies and tracking their effectiveness and impact. Using a data-driven approach to investigate all available evidence from research can generate well-informed decisions based on accurate and meaningful information. The outcome can also enhance stakeholders’ collaboration capabilities, increase the capacity to handle challenges, and improve technologies’ usefulness, all aimed at accelerating renewable energy transitions. Collective intelligence emerges from the collaboration and collective efforts of many actors and appears in consensus decision making.

This Special Issue of Energies aims to offer a platform for accelerating environmental innovations and renewable energy transitions in an increasingly datafied society. This Special Issue seeks contributions—in the form of research articles, literature reviews, theoretical analysis, case studies, short communications, and discussion papers—that offer fertile insights and new knowledge in relation to innovation studies and sustainability transitions. The scope of this Special Issue—which compiles the cutting-edge work of researchers that investigates the state-of-the-art and new perspectives in the field—includes but is not limited to the following topics:

  • The pace of the diffusion of data-driven smart zero-emission innovations;
  • Resource mobilization for renewable energy transitions based on evidence-based policy decisions;
  • Smart transition governance processes and benefits;
  • User innovation, niche development, and regime destabilization in renewable energy transitions;
  • Influences of technological and sectoral contexts on technological (energy) innovation systems;
  • Influence of policy discourse networks on local renewable energy transitions;
  • Challenges and barriers to the upscaling and diffusion of environmental innovations;
  • Incumbents’ enabling role in innovative technological niches in the energy sector;
  • The role of smart energy technologies in impacting the pace of renewable energy transitions;
  • The impacts of evidence-based policy decisions on the pace of environmental innovations;
  • The potential of evidence-based policy decisions in accelerating renewable energy transitions;
  • Methodological frameworks for environmental innovations and sustainability transitions;
  • Theoretical advancements in the acceleration phase of renewable energy transitions;
  • Best practices and lessons learned for the rapid diffusion of environmental innovations;
  • Policies balancing environmental innovation incentives;
  • Opportunities for aligning transition and economic goals to legitimize transition policies;
  • The contribution of innovative technological niches in renewable energy transition governance;
  • Experimentation, learning, adaptation, and network effects mechanisms in innovative technological niches;
  • Empirical and theoretical analysis of socio-technical shifts in transition governance in technological innovation systems;
  • The role of established technological regimes in transforming socio–technical constellations in renewable energy transitions.

Dr. Simon Elias Bibri
Guest Editor

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 papers will be 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 2000 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.

Keywords

  • technological innovation systems
  • environmental innovations
  • renewable energy transitions
  • smart energy transitions
  • diffusion of environmental innovations
  • sustainability transitions
  • sociotechnical regimes
  • institutional barriers
  • transition governance
  • evidence-based policy decisions
  • innovative technological niches
  • strategic niche management
  • transition experiments
  • transition pathways
  • innovation policy

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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