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Geoenergy sources will continue to be mainstays of the world’s energy mix for many years to come, but the technological and business realities behind these energy sources are changing in two fundamental ways. First, with much of the world’s “easy oil” already consumed, the companies behind geoenergy will have to use increasingly sophisticated technologies to find and deliver these energy sources to the market. Second, the expectations placed upon the geoenergy sector by many of its stakeholders have grown considerably with regards to environmental stewardship, safety, and human welfare. In the face of these kinds of challenges, the industry will require an increasing degree of technological and commercial sophistication to continue to be a part of the world’s sustainable energy mix. Blockchain has emerged as a promising innovation that could potentially play an important role in delivering the kinds of technological and commercial capabilities that the geoenergy sector will need to achieve these ends. In spite of the myriad ways that blockchain could potentially improve the efficiency and sustainability of the geoenergy industry, however, the technology is still evolving, and a few barriers stand in the way of its widespread deployment. This paper puts forward case study evidence from the Intel Corporation and the Energistics Consortium showing what the geoenergy sector can learn about blockchain from other industries, and highlights that the absence of data standards and interoperability has contributed to blockchain’s failure to deliver significant value in the geoenergy domain thus far.

Thermal energy storage (TES) is a critical component in a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant since it is able to provide dispatchability and increase the capacity factor of the plant. Recently the Brayton power cycle using supercritical carbon dioxide (s-CO2) has attracted considerable attention as it allows a higher thermal to electric power conversion efficiency compared to the conventional Rankine cycle using subcritical steam. However, no commercial TES has yet been developed for integration with a s-CO2 based plant. One reason is the lack of a suitable storage material. This work explores the use of a eutectic NaCl-Na2CO3 salt as a reliable high temperature phase change material (PCM). The PCM has been thermally cycled up to 1000 times. Its thermophysical properties have been measured before and after it has been subjected to the thermal cycling and its corrosion behavior has been investigated. This eutectic salt shows good thermal stability without degradation after cycling 1000 times between 600 and 650 °C. The corrosion rate on stainless steel 316 (SS316) increases linearly up to 350 cycles, and thereafter it stabilizes at 70 mg/cm2.

Recently published green infrastructure, nature-based solutions, and ecosystem disservices (ED) literature have focused primarily on the supply of urban regulating and cultural ecosystem services (ES). Other literature on urban and peri-urban agriculture has mostly studied the role of localized, intensive agricultural practices in providing food to inhabitants. The aim of this review is to raise awareness and stress the knowledge gap on the importance of urban provisioning ES, particularly when implementing an edible green infrastructure (EGI) approach as it can offer improved resilience and quality of life in cities. We compiled and systematically analyzed studies on urban ES and ED related to a number of EGI typologies. Our systematic review of the relevant literature via an EGI framework, identified more than 80 peer-reviewed publications that focused on ES and food production in urban areas. An EGI approach can contribute socially, economically, and environmentally to urban sustainability and food security. However, such benefits must be weighed against ED trade-offs, including: potential health risks caused by human exposure to heavy metals and organic chemical contaminants often present in urban surroundings. We conclude with recommendations and guidelines for incorporating EGI into urban planning and design, and discuss novel areas for future research.

Abstract The global community is increasingly committed to transitioning to green energy technologies. However, while the percentage of the worldʼs energy coming from renewables is growing, the absolute amount of energy delivered to the global marketplace in the form of fossil fuels is also getting bigger, causing the International Energy Agency to recently declare that “it is too soon to see a rapid decline of oil.” This realization carries with it some sobering perspective about what needs to be done by the energy industry to mitigate climate change. Based on a keynote address delivered at the United Nations’ “Resource Management Week 2021” conference, this viewpoint argues that, in tandem to sowing the seeds of tomorrow's renewable energy systems, we also need to reduce the emissions from the systems that we have right now because the evidence in front of us strongly suggests that these legacy energy sources will continue to be around for the short- to medium-term future. To this end, this paper highlights four digital technological developments that have the potential to significantly help the oil & gas industry to make progress on this front: (1) continuing the industry's journey to “smartness,” (2) edge computing, (3) the emergence of global data standards for measuring greenhouse gas emissions, and (4) improving the efficiency of digital infrastructure.

During the past two decades of e-commerce growth, the concept of a business model has become increasingly popular. More recently, the research on this realm has grown rapidly, with diverse research activity covering a wide range of application areas. Considering the sustainable development goals, the innovative business models have brought a competitive advantage to improve the sustainability performance of organizations. The concept of the sustainable business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural, or other contexts, in a sustainable way. The process of sustainable business model construction forms an innovative part of a business strategy. Different industries and businesses have utilized sustainable business models’ concept to satisfy their economic, environmental, and social goals simultaneously. However, the success, popularity, and progress of sustainable business models in different application domains are not clear. To explore this issue, this research provides a comprehensive review of sustainable business models literature in various application areas. Notable sustainable business models are identified and further classified in fourteen unique categories, and in every category, the progress -either failure or success- has been reviewed, and the research gaps are discussed. Taxonomy of the applications includes innovation, management and marketing, entrepreneurship, energy, fashion, healthcare, agri-food, supply chain management, circular economy, developing countries, engineering, construction and real estate, mobility and transportation, and hospitality. The key contribution of this study is that it provides an insight into the state of the art of sustainable business models in various application areas and future research directions. This paper concludes that popularity and the success rate of sustainable business models in all application domains have been increased along with the increasing use of advanced technologies.

Sustainable carbon skeletons with rich defects and negligible pores are applied to induce the uniform metallic sodium deposition for stable sodium metal batteries.