This book describes numerous issues and brings an improved understanding of a key agenda item for the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The SDGs represent an urgent call for action by all countries, developed and developing, working jointly within the global community. A few of the industries it supports include food processing, energy, biomedical science, space research, drug delivery, and biosensors. This book highlights multidisciplinary solutions for protecting the environment while ensuring the future of our planet. The book mainly targets undergraduates, postgraduates, and doctoral students who are working in materials science and researchers across the world working in interdisciplinary research for climate change for sustainable growth.

The world is currently undergoing an historic energy transition, driven by increasingly stringent decarbonisation policies and rapid advances in low-carbon technologies. The large-scale shift to low-carbon energy is disrupting the global energy system, impacting whole economies, and changing the political dynamics within and between countries. This open access book, written by leading energy scholars, examines the economic and geopolitical implications of the global energy transition, from both regional and thematic perspectives. The first part of the book addresses the geopolitical implications in the world’s main energy-producing and energy-consuming regions, while the second presents in-depth case studies on selected issues, ranging from the geopolitics of renewable energy, to the mineral foundations of the global energy transformation, to governance issues in connection with the changing global energy order. Given its scope, the book will appeal to researchers in energy, climate change and international relations, as well as to professionals working in the energy industry.

A global assessment of potential and anticipated impacts of efforts to achieve the SDGs on forests and related socio-economic systems. This title is available as Open Access via Cambridge Core.

Accelerating sustainable energy transitions away from carbon-based fuel sources needs to be high on the agendas of developing countries. It is key in achieving their climate mitigation promises and sustainable energy development objectives. To bring about rapid transitions, simultaneous turns are imperative in hardware deployment, policy improvements, financing innovation, and institutional strengthening. These systematic turns, however, incur tensions when considering the multiple options available and the disruptions of entrenched power across pockets of transition innovations. These heterogeneous contradictions and their trade-offs, and uncertainties and risks have to be systematically recognized, understood, and weighed when making decisions. This book explores how the transitions occur in fourteen developing countries and broadly surveys their technological, policy, financing, and institutional capacities in response to the three key aspects of energy transitions: achieving universal energy access, harvesting energy efficiency, and deploying renewable energy. The book shows how fragmented these approaches are, how they occur across multiple levels of governance, and how policy, financing, and institutional turns could occur in these complex settings. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of energy and climate policy, development studies, international relations, politics, strategic studies, and geography. It is also useful to policymakers and development practitioners.

The book offers a multidisciplinary investigation into the economic, technological, environmental, and social impacts of Industry 4.0 technology that ensures inclusive and sustainable growth development of regions and countries. Along with identifying new opportunities that new technology provides for inclusive growth, the book aims to propose theoretical substantiation and develop economic, institutional, organizational, and information mechanisms that aid to reduce and eliminate the potential economic, social, and environmental risks. A broad multidisciplinary approach integrating research capabilities of economic and administrative sciences, artificial intelligence and computer sciences, pedagogy and linguistics, latest findings in the above mentioned scientific areas, as well as empirical evidence and pilot innovative research projects conducted by the contributors, allowed them to draw conclusions and develop recommendations for achieving inclusive growth in industrial and agricultural production, innovation and investment activities, management and environment protection, healthcare and education associated with the use of new technology. The contributors hope that empirical materials, innovative developments, and suggestions inspire scientific research, encourage applied studies, and supplement training programs in economic, administrative, social, and computer sciences at the advanced universities and research institutions, in the post-Soviet territory, in particular.

This outlook highlights climate-safe investment options until 2050, policies for transition and specific regional challenges. It also explores options to eventually cut emissions to zero.

The United States and China are the world's top two energy consumers and, as of 2010, the two largest economies. Consequently, they have a decisive role to play in the world's clean energy future. Both countries are also motivated by related goals, namely diversified energy portfolios, job creation, energy security, and pollution reduction, making renewable energy development an important strategy with wide-ranging implications. Given the size of their energy markets, any substantial progress the two countries make in advancing use of renewable energy will provide global benefits, in terms of enhanced technological understanding, reduced costs through expanded deployment, and reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to conventional generation from fossil fuels. Within this context, the U.S. National Academies, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), reviewed renewable energy development and deployment in the two countries, to highlight prospects for collaboration across the research to deployment chain and to suggest strategies which would promote more rapid and economical attainment of renewable energy goals. Main findings and concerning renewable resource assessments, technology development, environmental impacts, market infrastructure, among others, are presented. Specific recommendations have been limited to those judged to be most likely to accelerate the pace of deployment, increase cost-competitiveness, or shape the future market for renewable energy. The recommendations presented here are also pragmatic and achievable.

This book focuses on spatial planning – an important determinant of energy saving and renewable energy supply. Revealing the key driving forces for spatial development supporting the shift towards energy efficiency and renewable energy supplies, it shows the importance of integrated spatial and energy planning approaches for a timely and sustainable change of energy systems, thus supporting policies of climate protection. As operating within the context of renewable energy sources is becoming a major policy issue at the international, European and national level, spatial dimensions of renewable energy systems as well as challenges, barriers and opportunities in different spatial contexts become more important. This book analyses not only the fundamental system interrelations between resources, technologies and consumption patterns with respect to energy, but also the links to the spatial context, and provides guidelines for researchers as well as practitioners in this new, emerging field. It presents innovative analytical tools to solve real-world problems and discusses the most important fields of action in integrated spatial and energy planning including planning contents, planning visions and principles as well as planning process design and planning methodology.