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In 2013, China imported 282 million tons of crude oil with an external dependence of 58.1%, surpassing the USA as the world’s largest net oil importer. An import source diversification strategy has been adopted by China to ensure oil supply security and to prevent oil supply disruption. However, the strategy is restricted by the imbalance of oil reserves. What is the reasonable and clear objective of the diversification strategy under an imbalanced environment? How do we assess the natural imbalance? This paper analyzes the oil import diversification of China and the USA, as well as the oil production of oil export countries by the oil import source diversification index (OISDI). Our results are as follows: the distribution of oil import sources for China tends to coincide with the oil production distribution of oil exporters in the world. Compared with the USA, China has more diversified import sources. The Chinese government paid much attention to import sources in the past. In the future, China will adjust the distributions of regional sources rather than focus on the number of sources to further optimize the structure of imported regions in the course of implementing the import source diversification strategy.

This article analyzes the environmental opportunities and limitations of digitalization in the agricultural sector by applying qualitative governance analysis. Agriculture is recognized as a key application area for digital technologies, including artificial intelligence. This is not least because it faces major sustainability challenges, especially with regard to meeting the climate and biodiversity targets set out in the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as the water-related objectives of EU environmental legislation. Based on an overview of the possible applications of digital technologies in agriculture, the article offers a status quo analysis of legal acts with relevance to digitalization in the EU agricultural sector. It is found that a reliable legal framework with regard to product liability and product safety, as well as data privacy, data access, and data security is important in this context. In addition, the European Common Agricultural Policy, as the most important funding instrument for digital innovations in the agricultural sector, should be designed in such a way that it links digitalization-related objectives more closely with sustainability targets. So far, the existing EU governance does not fully exploit the potentials of digitalization for environmental protection, and sight is lost of possible negative side effects such as rebound and shifting effects. Therefore, the article also offers proposals for the optimization of EU governance.

Although a large number of studies describe sustainability in horticulture for individual crops or use individual sustainability characteristics as examples, there is still a lack of information on what consumers regard as being the relevant criteria for sustainability in horticultural production in the German market. The aim of this paper is to provide a broad overview of the relevance of different sustainability characteristics for flowers and ornamental plants as well as for fruit and vegetables from a consumer perspective. First, the sustainability characteristics from the literature were grouped according to the four sustainability dimensions of ecology, economy, and social and corporate responsibility. Second, an exploratory online consumer survey was conducted for both non-food horticulture (ornamental plants and nursery products) and food horticulture (open field fruit and vegetables) with the aim of determining the initial significant indicators for various sustainability characteristics for consumers. A confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the four dimensions of the literature research. According to the survey results, the characteristics of ecology were highly relevant to the respondents, followed by the characteristics of social sustainability. However, some characteristics of social sustainability and corporate responsibility could not be confirmed by the model.

Education is a central strategy in terms of sustainable development (SD) and can contribute to solving global challenges like biodiversity loss and climate change. Content knowledge represents one base for teaching education for sustainable development (ESD). Therefore, identifying teaching and learning prerequisites regarding SD challenges in teacher education is crucial. The focus of the paper was to assess and learn more about student teachers’ procedural knowledge regarding issues of biodiversity and climate change, by using an expert benchmark. The aims of the study are to describe and identify (i) differences between students’ and experts’ effectiveness estimations, (ii) differences in bachelor and master students’ procedural knowledge, and (iii) differences between procedural knowledge of students studying different ESD-relevant subjects. Student teachers at eight German universities (n = 236) evaluated the effectiveness of solution strategies to SD challenges. The results showed high deviations in the effectiveness estimations of experts and students and, therefore, differing procedural knowledge. The lack of student teachers’ interdisciplinary knowledge to reduce biodiversity loss and climate change seemed to be largely independent of their study program and ESD-relevant subject. One reason for this may be the generally low number of ESD-relevant courses they attended. This study suggests further longitudinal research in order to make clear statements about changes in SD-related knowledge during teacher education.

Against the backdrop of current sustainability problems, various social innovations for sustainable consumption are emerging across the globe. In order to explore the sustainability potentials of such initiatives, it is vital to understand (1) why consumers are accepting and joining these initiatives and (2) how they perceive the sustainability potentials of initiatives’ offers. In order to correctly estimate the sustainability potential of the initiatives, one should consider possible negative sustainability impacts as well as rebound effects alongside all the positive sustainability effects. Moreover, studies on social innovations for sustainable consumption have mostly been conducted in the context of the Global North. This paper focuses on studying and understanding the current situation of social innovations for sustainable consumption and its sustainability potentials in Tehran, Iran. A qualitative explorative study was conducted using desk research as well as semi-structured in-depth interviews with Iranian consumers. The results of this study confirm the existence of growing supply and demand trends for such initiatives in Iran. Among the different initiatives, those that are copies of international companies or offering alternative mobility solutions seem to have more chances for diffusion, as consumers are more motivated to use their offers. The sample of this study believed that by joining these initiatives, they could contribute to achieving greater sustainability. However, the results of the interviews also show that the possible negative sustainability and rebound effects of their engagement in such initiatives were often neglected. Therefore, there is still a need not only for educating consumers about the overall sustainability potentials of these initiatives but also for exhibiting the sustainability impacts that their consumption behaviors regarding the use of initiatives’ offers can have. This way, these initiatives can be more successful in terms of contributing to sustainability.

Political participation and sustainability seem to be closely intertwined. In the last few decades it can be shown that the topic of sustainability and ecological interest groups play an important role in citizen engagement, political participation, and democratic innovations at the local level. Using a participatory rhombus model of participatory democracy, different forms of participation and democratic innovations in the representative sphere, in direct democracy, in demonstrative participatory space, and finally in deliberative participatory instruments are important in the decision-making for sustainability policies. Here the paper tries to close the gap in empirical data on the perceptions of citizens and councilors on these participatory instruments. Citizens believe strongly in the importance of elections and referendums, but they extend their political repertoire and start protesting and demanding more deliberative democracy. Councilors positively perceive democratic innovations, and the councilors of the Green Party in particular strongly support new participatory instruments. However, citizens and councilors do not support all instruments in the same way.

The proliferation of renewable energy sources has presented challenges for Balancing Responsible Parties (BRPs) in accurately forecasting production and consumption. This issue is being addressed through the emergence of the balancing markets, which aims to maintain real-time equilibrium between production and consumption across various imbalance settlement intervals. This study conducted a techno-economic analysis of Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP) and Redox-Flow Batteries (RFB) utilized in grid balancing management, with a focus on a 100 MW threshold deviation in 1 min, 5 min, and 15 min settlement intervals. Imbalance data, encompassing both imbalance volumes and prices, sourced from the Belgian Transmission System Operator (TSO)—Elia—over a three-year period from September 2019 to September 2022, formed the basis of this investigation. The analysis underscored the significant influence of factors, such as imbalance volume, price dynamics, and market settlement intervals on the technical and financial feasibility of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) within the context of balancing management. Notably, the technical and economic results of LFP and RFB exhibited comparable tendencies across the different market settlement intervals, providing valuable insights into potential developments about how trends will evolve in other settlement intervals.