• Energy Research
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AbstractThe purpose of this integrative review is to examine recent literature on the intersection of SARS‐CoV‐2 (COVID‐19 novel coronavirus) and climate change that will lead to a greater understanding of the complexities of the urgent pandemic linked with the emerging climate crisis. A literature search for peer‐reviewed, English language, literature published since the pandemic emerged was conducted using Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PubMed, and the Cochrane Library. The final sample yielded a total of 22 commentaries, editorials, discussion papers, and a research study that explicitly addressed the intersection of COVID‐19 and climate change. Sixty articles emerged in the initial review of the intersection of the COVID‐19 pandemic and climate change with the final yield of 22 articles deemed valid for inclusion after full text review. With the emergence of COVID‐19 and scholarly discourse that addresses the intersection of the pandemic with climate change, key issues emerged that intersect with policy /advocacy, social justice, and nursing's public health role in clinical practice, education, policy/advocacy, and research/scholarship. Five themes that emerged included the role of public health in COVID‐19 and climate change efforts; global approach addressing human‐environment issues; intersection of COVID‐19 and climate change from a community and global perspective; impacts of COVID‐19, climate change and the environment and professional associations and specialty organizations’ views and responsibilities with a lens on COVID‐19 and climate change. Despite the importance of addressing racial inequities as well as systemic and structural racism that impacts those most affected by climate change and pandemics such as COVID‐19, no literature addressed this topic. Public health nursing has a critical role in addressing climate change and the pandemic response to COVID 19 in the 21st century.

Anderson and colleagues discuss the need to mitigate the longer term effects of the covid-19 pandemic in an equitable way.1 Plans for the United Kingdom need to tackle the triple public health challenge it faces from covid-19, climate change, and Brexit. The pandemic and measures to control it are exposing interwoven relationships between wellbeing, inequalities, the economy, the environment, and society as …

PurposeOver the last decade, investments in green energy companies have witnessed noticeable growth rates. However, the glacial pace of the world economic restoration due to COVID-19 pandemic placed a high degree of uncertainty over this market. Therefore, this study investigates the short- and long-term relationships between COVID-19 new cases and WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index (NEX) using daily data over the period from January 23, 2020 to February 1, 2023.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilize an autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing estimation technique.FindingsThe results show a significant positive impact of COVID-19 new cases on the returns of NEX index in the short run, whereas it has a significant negative impact in the long run. It is also found that the S&P Global Clean Energy Index has a significant positive impact on the returns of NEX index. Although oil has an influential effect on stock returns, the results show insignificant impact.Practical implicationsGovernments have the chance to flip this trend by including investment in green energy in their economic growth stimulation policies. Governments should highlight the fundamental advantages of investing in this type of energy such as creating job vacancies while reducing emissions and promoting innovation.Originality/valueFirst, as far as the authors are aware, the authors are the first to examine the effect of oil prices on clean energy stocks during COVID-19. Second, the authors contribute to studies on the relationship between oil prices and renewable energy. Third, the authors add to the emerging strand of literature on the impact of COVID-19 on various sectors of the economy. Fourth, the findings of the paper can add to the growing literature on sustainable development goals, in specific the papers related to energy sustainability.

The propagation of the pandemic times, especially during COVID-19, has caused millions of morbidity and mortality cases across the world, forcing people to change their lifestyles and governments to take different measures to slow down the spread of the disease. Consequently, electricity demand and consumption patterns across other socioeconomic sectors were affected by the pandemic. This study aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on spatiotemporal electricity demand and consumption across six socioeconomic sectors in Doha City, Qatar. The electricity demand and consumption were assessed for three time periods in the pandemic year (pre-lockdown, lockdown, and post-lockdown) compared to electricity consumption prior to the pandemic year (2017–2019). The empirical analysis was performed on a geographically visualized map to determine the areas with high and low electricity consumption. The pattern has been compared before and during the pandemic with previous years. The results show that electricity consumption has increased in the residential and governmental sectors and declined in the industrial and commercial sectors during the lockdown period compared to the post-lockdown period, particularly in the summer season. Mapping the hot/cold spots areas and the temporal analysis of the changing patterns of electricity demand and consumption could provide useful insight to decision-makers for targeted interventions.

As a global concern, medical waste (MW) links public health, environmental pollution, and resource sustainability. This study aims to assess the two issues related to medical waste in Bahrain: the increasing generation rate of MW and its management. The integrated Environmental Assessment (IEA) methodology was adopted, including the DPSIR (Drivers, Pressures, State, Impact, Responses) framework, analysis of existing policies, and the outlook. Consequently, data were collected from official health statistics in Bahrain, and related policies for the last two decades (2001 to 2021) were also collected, in addition to interviews with Bahrain medical waste (BMW) treatment company. The results show a vast increase in medical waste during COVID-19. Moreover, most of the existing policies address the impact of the BMW issues, but the policies are lacking in tackling the drivers and pressures; there is also a policy gap related to the generation rate. Accordingly, a set of policies was proposed to overcome the two medical waste issues. Moreover, to overcome issues associated with MW, the study recommended reforming regulations aiming to reduce and manage medical waste efficiently in order to focus more on drivers and pressure causing an elevation in MW issues in Bahrain.

Preserving energy in households and office buildings is a significant challenge, mainly due to the recent shortage of energy resources, the uprising of the current environmental problems, and the global lack of utilizing energy-saving technologies. Not to mention, within some regions, COVID-19 social distancing measures have led to a temporary transfer of energy demand from commercial and urban centers to residential areas, causing an increased use and higher charges, and in turn, creating economic impacts on customers. Therefore, the marketplace could benefit from developing an internet of things (IoT) ecosystem that monitors energy consumption habits and promptly recommends action to facilitate energy efficiency. This paper aims to present the full integration of a proposed energy efficiency framework into the Home-Assistant platform using an edge-based architecture. End-users can visualize their consumption patterns as well as ambient environmental data using the Home-Assistant user interface. More notably, explainable energy-saving recommendations are delivered to end-users in the form of notifications via the mobile application to facilitate habit change. In this context, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt to develop and implement an energy-saving recommender system on edge devices. Thus, ensuring better privacy preservation since data are processed locally on the edge, without the need to transmit them to remote servers, as is the case with cloudlet platforms. 10 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables, IEEE Systems Journal, 2021

Tourism and hospitality have been recognized as leading economic sectors globally. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, it was estimated that the tourism and hospitality sector was growing by around 4% each year. Although the economic-efficiency-led hypothesis of the tourism and hospitality sector is strong, there is another perspective related to tourism and hospitality. That is, tourism and hospitality are not as “green” as they were supposed to be. Indeed, this sector is known for its outsized carbon footprint. It is estimated that, if not managed efficiently, the GHG contribution of the tourism sector will grow in the future. Specifically, the hotel business accounts for 1% of total global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), which is huge. Responding to these significant issues, this study investigates the relationship between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of a hotel enterprise and employees’ pro-environmental behavior (PEB). The mediating role of environmental-specific transformational leadership (ESTFL) and the moderating role of green perceived organizational support (GPOS) were also tested in the above relationship. The data were collected by the employees through a self-administered questionnaire. The hypothesized relations were statistically investigated by using structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings revealed that CSR activities of a hotel not only influence employees’ PEB directly, but the mediating role of ESTFL was also significant. At the same time, the conditional indirect role of GPOS was also confirmed. This study offers different theoretical and practical insights, which have been discussed in detail.

This study investigates the water - electricity consumption in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic across six socioeconomic sectors. Due to inadequate research on spatial modelling of water - electricity consumption in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study investigated geographical block-level variation in water and electricity consumption in Doha city of Qatar. Spatial analyses were performed to investigate the spatial differences in each sector. Five geospatial techniques in a Geographical Information System (GIS) context were used in the study. Moran's I, Anselin Local Moran's I, and Getis-Ord G i ∗ statistics tools were used to identify the hot spots and cold spots of water and electricity consumption in each sector. Furthermore, Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) models were employed to investigate the spatial relationship between water and electricity consumption during the pandemic year. The findings show that there is a distinction in water and electricity consumption at the block level across all sectors and over time. Hot spot and spatial regression analysis reveal spatial and temporal heterogeneities in the study area across the six socioeconomic sectors. The intensity of hot spots of water and electricity consumption are found in the southern and western parts of the city due to high population density and the concentration of the commercial and industrial areas. Furthermore, analyzing the spatiotemporal correlation between the water and electricity consumption across the six sectors shows variation within and between these sectors over space and time. The results show a positive relationship between water and electricity consumption in some blocks and over time of each sector. During the lockdown phase, strong positive correlation between water and electricity consumption have exist in the residential sector due to extra water and electricity footprints in this sector. Conversely, the water and electricity consumption were positively correlated but declined in the industrial and commercial sector due to the curtailment in production, economic activities, and reduction in people's mobility. Mapping the hot spot blocks and the blocks with high relationship between water and electricity consumption could provide useful insight to decision-makers for targeted interventions.