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Abstract Sustainability is a topic that has been addressed and enhanced with significant improvement opportunities by the fourth industrial revolution, which is an essential strategy in the medium- and long-term for industries to adapt to an urgent necessity from society: for competitive and sustainable manufacturing of goods. In that regard, energy efficiency is one of the key aspects for industries that want to achieve a sustainable and carbon neutral production process. This paper approaches how the application of technologies and methodologies can substantially improve processes overall efficiency in terms of energy consumption. This paper is divided in a three-step research, starting with: a systematic review to identify how smart manufacturing and cyber–physical systems are leveraging results in manufacturing energy efficiency; followed by experiments to make real-time monitoring and simulation of industrial energy consumption to optimize processes and reduce energy waste, and as a third and final step results are discussed showing gains in production planning and potential saving opportunities in manufacturing energy consumption and costs.

The paper reports on the methodology and results of several studies on the long-term efficiency potentials in the two energy transformation steps from primary energy to final and useful energy and, more importantly, from useful energy to energy services. The examination of these potentials considers the lifetimes and periods of refurbishment of manufactured artefacts: Buildings and infrastructure that will save or waste energy in 2050 that are being built or restored today. The paper emphasises the enormous size of energy conservation potentials achievable not only by reducing energy losses but also by decreasing the specific activity levels for several energy services through improved material efficiency and intensified use of products, plants, and vehicles. It also reports on major definitive conclusions on R&D needs and challenges to R&D-policies as well as immediate policy action in OECD-countries in order to realise the vision of reducing primary energy use per capita by two thirds in industrialised countries within the next five decades.

The European Green Deal is a political milestone aiming to promote a carbon-neutral economy in the European Union. Decarbonizing the complex food sector requires the unified interaction among effective climate policies, economic instruments, and initiatives involving multiple stakeholders. Despite increasing efforts to highlight the importance of innovations and finance to achieve sustainable food supply chains (FSC), comprehensive information about related opportunities and barriers to mitigating emissions in the food sector is still under-explored. To cover this gap, this paper applies an existing industrial policy framework under the lens of the EU FSC to identify potential strategies that should help achieve the needed financial means and innovation actions, as well as to gauge political alignment across FSC stages. Methodologically, the pillars proposed in the framework are linked to multi-stakeholders’ initiatives engaged in achieving net-zero emissions. The paper highlights three main implications of the identified interlinkages. First, political directionality related to the food sector should be more comprehensively tailored to account for the specificities of all stages of the FSC. Second, research and development projects shall likewise cover all stages, instead of emphasizing only food production and agricultural systems. Finally, multiple stakeholders are crucial as promoters of technology and innovation towards a green economy. Nevertheless, initiatives should be integrated into political discussions in order to promote civil awareness, sustainable food and services demand, aligned to political guidelines.

KOF Working Papers, 419

Sustainability is the ability to use resources rationally, follow technological development, and show institutional change continuity. This research analyzes the researched companies' activities for sustainable human resources management through career web pages. In addition, it is aimed to analyze how they benefit from websites in electronic recruitment and innovation approaches in human resources management. The human resources and career websites analysis method developed by Cober, Brown, and Levy (2004) was used in the research. In the research, the companies' human resources and career websites included in the Borsa Istanbul (BIST) Sustainability Index for November 2019-October 2020 were analyzed and analyzed. It has been determined that sustainable companies use innovative tools in human resources management, benefit from digital systems in their recruitment methods, and share information that can affect potential applicants. Organizations within the scope of the research state that they evaluate the innovative ideas of their human resources by developing innovative projects. However, sustainability reports, where employees are seen as an essential capital, may not be fully known by job applicants. Online platforms should be established to access and communicate employee and potential employee candidates to Human Resources. The era we live in is called the information age and the most important concept defining this era is change and the increase in the speed of change. We think it is necessary, even mandatory, to update their employment policies according to information technologies and move some of their activities to virtual environments. Emphasizing the importance of organizations moving their human resources functions to virtual environments makes this research unique, essential, and functional.

Abstract Financing decentralized renewable energy infrastructures in Germany is a complex issue due to the fact that public authorities lack the needed capital and institutional private investors are generally averse to restraints such as high transaction costs and risk-return-concerns. Consequently, alternative financing concepts must be developed to keep the energy transition going. An approach that has recently gained attention in Germany is the concept of financial citizen participation. The concept entails that private individuals contribute to the realization of infrastructure projects by investing in renewable energy projects via various business models and financing concepts. This article illustrates empirical results on the relevance of financial citizen participation within the German renewable energy sector, briefly reviews the technical, political and legal framework that led to the significant development in the field of financial citizen participation and analyzes different business models and citizen participation schemes from Germany with a particular focus on so called energy cooperatives and closed-end funds.

Creating and delivering products and services that promote sustainability is increasingly important in today’s economy. Novel services based on digital technologies and infrastructure can significantly contribute to sustainable development, as demonstrated by digitally enabled car-sharing services where increased asset utilization reduces production-related greenhouse gas emissions. However, there is still limited knowledge on how digital service innovation can purposefully be applied to promote sustainability. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic literature review and perform a qualitative inductive analysis of 50 articles on the impact of digital service innovation on social, environmental, and economic sustainability. We provide a comprehensive overview of real-world applications and identify five underlying mechanisms through which innovation with digital services can drive sustainable development. In doing so, we aim to pave the way to purposefully conceive, design, and implement digital services for sustainability.

Socialist countries, such as China, have stressed the importance of an equitable society where citizens work together. Thus, the sharing economy (e.g., the bike-sharing industry) could be one of the challenges determining the future of China, as the initial bubble of the bike-sharing industry collapsed in 2017, with many problems stemming from the users’ deposits that were lost and the depletion of the investment funds, resulting in numerous malfunctioning bikes every day. This paper evaluates the bike-sharing industry in terms of sustainable governance in the future and identifies its factors. Therefore, we use the structural equation model based on survey questionnaires and find that most of the input variables of the perceived rational (PRV) and emotional values (PEV), perceived risk (PR), and externalities (EXT) are not very successful in promoting the sustainable governance of the bike-sharing industry. However, using the bootstrapping simulation approach, we find that the role of modulators such as satisfaction and sustainable management factors are statistically significant. The modulating effect of a user’s satisfaction on the intention of continuous use based on all four inputs of PRV (0.304), PEV (0.298), PR (−0.156), and EXT (0.263), as well as the other indirect variables of sustainable management, such as environmental factors (0.284), is shown to be statistically significant. Based on these modulating effects, we conclude that the sharing economy, represented by the bike-sharing industry, could be one of the most important business cases for the future of China, but only if it is strongly supported by the public. Therefore, to help the industry get out of its current slump, we propose that the bike-sharing companies put in more diverse efforts to employ multi-use types of innovation with practical benefits such as coupons for the nearest shops, and social functions that enhance the quality of life such as mileage contribution from bike sharing for disabled people. Evidently, the Chinese government should eliminate “the over-supply issues” through appropriate market governance and increase its efforts toward a better public–private partnership (PPP), as the sharing economy should be based on the harmonization of all interest groups to eventually create value.