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With the fast growth of the global economy, energy supply and demand have a strong impact on social, economic, and environmental aspects. As a consequence, this has pushed the decision-makers to formulate objectives, guiding economic policies toward sustainable goals. The process is known as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that have been proposed by the United Nations. This being said, the energy sector is a vital domain with a vast potential for improvments in terms of technologies and ligistalations. Solar energy is among the most efficient solutions proposed to reduce the economic and environmental footprints of energy. In this frame, the current paper aims to localize solar energy within SDGs and analyze the contribution of the solar energy towards the achievement of the SDGs. Moreover, the current work highlights the contributions of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (MBR) Solar Park in the United Arab Emirates to achieving the SDGs. Indeed, the MBR Solar Park concept offers valuable insights of environmental impacts by deploying clean and affordable energy sources in place of conventional fossil fuel power plants that are still heavily used in the region. The MBR Solar Park operation has already mitigated 6.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and this number will likely rise when all phases are installed and operational. Moreover, it has been shown that MBR Solar Park achieve several SDGs such SDG 8: decent work and economic growth, SDG 9: industry, innovation and infrastructure, SDG 11: sustainable cities and communities, and SDG 15: life on land.

Increasing the use of electric vehicles (EVs) is regarded as a step in the right direction to reduce air pollution and carbon emissions. However, a dramatic increase of EV and charging stations has raised voltage quality and harmonic distortion issues that affect the performance of integrated renewable power sources (wind and solar) and smart-grid electrical transmission networks. This paper models an integrated electric vehicle charging and battery storage system operating in the presence of unpredictable wind and solar power sources. The aim is to enable the design of an electrical control system that develops the correct duty cycle to stabilize and regulate the voltage at the dc/dc power conversion station. Simulations are performed to evaluate energy management by the proposed control system. The proposed system effectively manages the electric power on the grid by drawing power from the batteries at peak times and then charging them in off-peak times, reducing the load on the converter and enabling the reduction of charging time for electric vehicles. A constant voltage is achieved on the grid irrespective of fluctuations in renewable energy generation and in the load.

Closed-loop supply chain networks are gaining research popularity due to environmental, economic and social concerns. Such networks are primarily designed to overcome carbon footprints and to retrieve end of life products from customers. This study considers a multi echelon closed-loop supply chain in the presence of machine disruption. A multi-objective model is presented to optimize the total cost, the total time and emissions in a closed-loop supply chain network. The aim is to analyze the trade-off between the objectives of cost, time, and emissions and how these decisions are impacted by the selection of different available machines. A number of solution approaches are tested on a case study from the tire industry. The results suggest the improved performance of the hybrid heuristic and the importance of controlling disruption in a closed-loop supply chain network. Furthermore, there is a trade-off between the different objective functions which can help the decision maker to choose a particular solution according to the preference of an organization. Finally, conclusion and future research avenues are provided.

Sustainability is a managerial trend that plays an important role in the contemporary organizational strategy. A company’s capability to make sustainability more dynamic and integrated with strategies, transforming it into a business asset, has yet to be studied. This process of adaptation is reflected through innovative practices. However, there is still a gap between these practices and the organization’s strategies and capabilities. The aim of this work was to conduct a systematic literature review of the dynamic capabilities for sustainability. Afterward, it was possible to systematize the available knowledge, assessing the current lack of research integrating both themes. The mainstream literature was classified and coded, resulting in a framework for what has been done to date, with recommendations to guide future research. Results show that more research is needed on dynamic capabilities for sustainability, especially in emerging economies in general. Future studies should also consider mixed methodologies and comparative perspectives in multiples sectors or in the services sector. There’s also space to discuss managerial innovations toward sustainability through research alliances between different institutions around the world. In short, there are few studies that connect both themes— corporate sustainability and dynamic capabilities—and for this reason there is an opportunity for future studies seeking to identify what kind of dynamic capabilities can be developed to more effectively overcome the emerging sustainability challenges.

Abstract Mitigating the effects of environmental deterioration requires a focus on not just CO2 emissions from energy consumption, but also environmental pollution from industry sectors. To reach this goal, recent studies have extended ecological footprint (EF) analysis to identify the ecological drivers of various key industry sectors. The role of the phosphorus (P) industry on the EF within the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework for China is the emphasis of this study. Autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) as well as the impulse response function and robustness analysis were used to consider a time from 1985 to 2018. The study verifies the EKC hypothesis for China in both the long and the short run, and indispensable determinants are proposed to be included to assure the model’s fitness and robustness when conducting EF analysis of industry sectors. Energy consumption–based carbon emissions have been verified as the dominant contributor to EF, but P use and urbanization have a significant lagged positive influence on EF in the short run. P exports, in particular, have been highlighted as a critical driver of the EF of China’s P industry. The conducted frequency domain causality test reinforced the above findings and demonstrated bidirectional causality at different frequencies. This work suggests that formulating plausible P export policies to alleviate the conflict between the output of China’s P industry and the environmental sustainability of this industry are necessary. In this context, “multidisciplinary, multidimensional, and practical solutions” are most desirable for sustainable P management.

It is imperative to increase the connectable capacity (i.e., hosting capacity) of distributed generation in order to decarbonise electricity distribution networks. Hybrid generation that exploits complementarity in resource characteristics among different renewable types potentially provides value for minimising technical constraints and increasing the effective use of the network. Tidal, wave and wind energy are prominent offshore renewable energy sources. It is of importance to explore their potential complementarity for increasing network integration. In this work, the novel introduction of these distinct offshore renewable resources into hosting capacity evaluation enables the quantification of the benefits of various resource combinations. A scenario reduction technique is adapted to effectively consider variation of these renewables in an AC optimal power flow-based nonlinear optimisation model. Moreover, the beneficial impact of active network management (ANM) on enhancing the renewable complementarity is also investigated. The combination of complementary hybrid generation and ANM, specifically where the maxima of the generation profiles rarely co-occur with each other and with the demand minimum, is found to make the best use of the network components.

Highlights •Biomass resource constraints impact the effectiveness of bioeconomy policies. •Bioeconomy policies may have an important impact on the sector structure in the long run, but the sector growth remains ultimately constrained by the availability of inputs. •Solutions to reduce the biomass constraint have to be included in innovation policy for the biobased economy.