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A focus on land-use and forests as a means to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the global atmosphere has been at the heart of the international climate change debate since the United Nations Kyoto Protocol was agreed in 1997. This environmental management practice is a process technically referred to as mitigation. These largely technical projects have aimed to provide sustainable development benefits to forest-dependent people, as well as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, these projects have had limited success in achieving these local development objectives. This article argues that this is due in part to the patriarchal underpinnings of the sustainable development and climate-change policy agendas. The author explores this theory by considering how a climate mitigation project in Bolivia has resulted in different outcomes for women and men, and makes links between the global decision-making process and local effects.

EU has set ambitious commitment to achieve low carbon energy and economy transition up to 2050. This low carbon transition means sustainable energy development path based on renewable energy sources and first of all should address the energy poverty vulnerability and justice issues. The main goal of the paper is to develop indicators framework for assessing low carbon just energy transition and to apply this framework for analysis how climate change mitigation policies in households targeting enhancement of energy renovation of residential buildings and promotion of the use of micro-generation technologies and other policies are affecting household's energy poverty and vulnerability in selected countries: Lithuania and Greece. This framework allows to assess three main dimensions of sustainable energy development: environmental, social and economic. The paper provides policy recommendations how to deal with just low carbon energy transition which means addressing energy poverty issues during moving to 100% renewables in power generation based on performed case studies.

Over the past decade, there has been a constant spotlight on introducing sustainability in the supply chain (SC). The materialistic human greed for production and consumption has led to a radically increased level of greenhouse gases. SC has become its principal contributor. We are addressing this socio-economic environmental challenge by developing a multi-stakeholder framework and focusing on a knowledge-based net zero supply chain, as there are no concrete existing studies that have investigated current state-of-the-art operations in this relevant field. Therefore, this research has been conducted to investigate the drivers, barriers and practices through which net zero economy (NZE) can be attained in a knowledge-based SC. In this regard, the paper conducts an exploratory systematic review of selected articles from peer-reviewed journals. The findings indicate that primary stakeholders (i.e. organisations and suppliers) require to take an active role in bringing about sustainable changes in practice. However, external perspectives (i.e. government, society, consumers and community) have also been identified as sources that create challenges as well as have the potential to aid sustainable industrial practices. Additionally, progress can be enhanced through proper policies, regulations and a knowledge-based conceptual framework to pave the way for a sustainable environment. Proper practices for NZE also provide scope for economic growth through cost-effective production. This paper will be beneficial for practitioners as well as policy makers on a global scale who aim to attain NZE for sustainability.

Resilience is receiving increasing scientific attention, albeit its notion is still in progress and not univocal, especially when it comes to specific sectors such as energy. Energy and resilience policy is detected as a dominant strategy to achieve international development objectives throughout long-term sustainability and wellbeing goals. Energy resilience also crosses major energy policy issues – namely energy vulnerability, security, poverty, and justice. Making use of the Web Of Science 2018 release, this work aims at contributing to a clarification of the concept of energy resilience, proposing a taxonomy. The bibliometric outputs show a sharp increase in scientific publications on the issue. The bibliometric analysis suggests a taxonomy of energy resilience based on 7 approaches or strategies. The results suggest an evolution of the conceptual contributions, that enlarge resilience early use, merely applied to technical and hard sciences. Resilience is today used in different disciplines, including social sciences and sustainability studies, as part of a holistic approach centered on sustainable development.

Abstract Natural gas is an important source of energy in the global economy, hence understanding the drivers of its prices is of significant interest for economic agents. This paper investigates the role of structural shocks for the dynamics of the U.S. natural gas market within the Bayesian Structural Vector Autoregression framework applied by Baumeister and Hamilton (2019a, AER), to the crude oil market. This approach provides clear intuition for the identification strategy and allows us to correctly estimate the short-term price elasticity of natural gas supply and demand. Our results indicate that the former is low, whereas the latter is higher than the average estimate in the literature. We also show that market specific demand shocks explain a dominant fraction of natural gas prices variability, while the contribution of supply, aggregate economic activity and inventory shocks is important only during specific market events such as the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we illustrate how changes in supply in the era of shale gas revolution contributed to the dynamics of natural gas prices.

Identifying the determinants of household electricity use is a key element in facilitating the efficient use of energy. Even more so, segmenting households into well-resolved and characterised groups makes it possible to explore electricity use trends at more disaggregated levels, revealing consumption patterns and reduction opportunities for different consumer groups. Considering such groups, the drivers and implications of consumption trends can be better understood, bringing new insights into electricity use and offering opportunities to target policies and interventions that represent the needs of population sub-groups. For this reason, the aim of this research is to develop distinct household typologies using a k-means cluster analysis method. This was developed using questionnaire data of 310 households collected in a locality in Botswana. A feature selection procedure that maximises the silhouette was also developed to select the variables with the most significant clustering tendency. The analysis resulted in four distinct groups that are distinguishable by dwelling type, tenure, the number of rooms, the number of bedrooms, annualised electricity consumption and the number of appliances. The clusters identification enhanced the understanding of the fundamental factors underlying electricity consumption characteristics of different household segments. With this known, it is possible to identify those groups that offer the greatest energy saving potentials, thus providing insights for targeted demand-side management (DSM) and other possible strategies aimed at efficient energy use by customers.

Coke is an integral component of the blast furnace charge; therefore, it plays an important role in the integrated steelmaking process. Achieving the required coke quality parameters by producers requires the use of a high proportion of the highest quality coking coals (hard coking coals) in the coking blends, which significantly increases the unit production costs. Approximately 75% of these costs are constituted by the cost of the coal blend’s preparation. There is a deficit in the best quality coking coals on the world market and their supply are characterized by large fluctuations in quality parameters. Therefore, from the point of view of the economics of coke production, it is advantageous to produce high-quality coke from a coke blend with the highest possible content of cheaper coals. The paper presents the results of the influence of coal charge bulk density and semi-soft coking coal content in the coking blend on the textural and structural parameters of coke, which determine its quality. Research has shown that the application of increased density influences the parameters of the texture and structure of the coke, which shape its quality parameters. The use of stamp-charging technology contributes to the improvement of the coke quality or enables the production of coke of a predetermined quality from blends containing cheaper semi-soft coals.

Abstract In modern developed economies, one of the primary objectives is to manage the transition from polluting to cleaner technologies as efficiently as possible. By now, in the current empirical literature, one can identify technological spillovers from environmental innovations as a major driver of this process. Specific energy policy aspects connected with industry behaviour have yet to be explored. The aim of this paper is to investigate energy efficiency via environmental innovation and the resulting degree of resilience and adaptation of both developed and developing countries. The work applies the non-parametric DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) framework and Tobit analysis. For this scope, it is built a panel dataset made of some 5000 observations based on energy policy and sustainable development variables for 136 OECD and non-OECD countries. The results show that knowledge spillovers from environmental innovations reduce inefficiency and therefore strengthen the resilience of economies that decide and manage to invest adequately in the transition to more sustainable technologies. Besides, OECD countries improve their energy efficiency scores over time, whilst non-OECD countries do not. This implies that sustainable technologies transition is made more efficient by environmental innovation but the process is fostered by disposing of a resilient economic system – hence, vulnerability can affect the transition. These hypotheses lead to important economic, social and environmental implications for energy policy modelling.