Sustainable electricity systems need renewable and dispatchable energy sources. Solar energy is an abundant source of renewable energy globally which is, though, by nature only available during the day, and especially in clear weather conditions.
This study reports comprehensive analysis of seasonal and inter-annual variations of aerosol optical and physical properties over the Pokhara Valley in the foothills of central Himalayas in Nepal utilizing the high-quality multi-year columnar aero
In order to achieve the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement, the world must reach net‐zero carbon emissions around mid‐century, which calls for an entirely new energy system.
This study reports comprehensive analysis of seasonal and inter-annual variations of aerosol optical and physical properties over the Pokhara Valley in the foothills of central Himalayas in Nepal utilizing the high-quality multi-year columnar aero
We estimated the individual contributions of black carbon (BC) and brown carbon (BrC) to the aerosol absorption coefficient (σap) and absorption aerosol optical depth (AAOD) in the highly polluted Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, by applying the absorptio
Systemic risks are characterized by high complexity, multiple uncertainties, major ambiguities, and transgressive effects on other systems outside of the system of origin.
Superconducting links are an innovative solution for bulk power transmission, distinguished by their compact dimensions, high efficiency and small environmental footprint.
Calls for more bicycle use have been heard from across the political spectrum in Germany for years. Nonetheless, policies that lead to a transition away from car use and toward the bicycle in urban mobility remain absent.
While the concept of ‘just transitions’ has become more and more prominent in academic and popular discussions of sustainability transition, these conceptions are often framed in purely economic terms, and focus on the economic impact on communiti
Human health and wellbeing and the health of the biosphere are inextricably linked. The state of Earth’s life-support systems, including freshwater, oceans, land, biodiversity, atmosphere, and climate, affect human health.
As the international community rallies around Net-Zero emissions targets, there is increasing interest in the development of governance for Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs), a range of proposed approaches which involve removing greenhouse ga
As the international community’s best expression of a collective vision of a desirable future, the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a framework against which to assess the broader impact of emerging technologies.
Boosted by impressive technological innovation and cost reductions, renewable energy in a growing number of countries is now primarily considered for its social and economic benefits.
In the wake of digitalization it is increasingly debated whether developing countries can achieve economic prosperity through industrialization in the same manner as developed countries did.
Future air quality will be driven by changes in air pollutant emissions, but also changes in climate. Here, we review the recent literature on future air quality scenarios and projected changes in effects on human health, crops and ecosystems.
We investigate whether political ideology has an observable effect on decarbonization ambition, renewable power aims, and preferences for power system balancing technologies in four European countries.
A recent article in this journal claimed to assess the socio-technical potential for onshore wind energy in Europe. We find the article to be severely flawed and raise concerns in five general areas.
International authorities are increasingly recognizing that utilizing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from various industries can assist strategies for mitigating climate change.
The environmental crisis due to air pollution, high CO2 emissions, noise from traffic and soil ceiling requires profound changes to the car-dependent transport system.
Urgent and ambitious climate action is required to avoid catastrophic climate change and consequent health impacts. Political will is a critical component of the ambitious climate action equation.
Over the past half century, it has become commonplace for environmental managers and policy makers to engage the public in decision making, a set of diverse activities known collectively as public participation.
In recent years, the role of the state in sustainability transitions has received increasing attention. Germany is often perceived as a forerunner in climate and environmental politics.
Germany represents a new and unconventional actor in the field of energy foreign policy. Based on its reputation as an energy transition frontrunner, it is pursuing a soft power strategy aimed at promoting its Energiewende policy approach abroad.
Integrating more sustainability into business processes is becoming increasingly important for companies. At the same time, they aim to collect and analyze large amounts of data (big data) to improve these processes.
An era (2005–2015) centered around the Copenhagen Accord saw the rise of several immature sociotechnical strategies currently at play: carbon capture and storage, REDD+, next-generation biofuels, shale gas, short-lived climate pollutants, carbon d
We perform a source attribution for tropospheric and ground-level ozone using a novel technique that accounts separately for the contributions of the two chemically distinct emitted precursors (reactive carbon and oxides of nitrogen) to the chemic
The European potential for renewable electricity is sufficient to enable fully renewable supply on different scales, from self-sufficient, subnational regions to an interconnected continent.
Purpose: This paper aims to increase related knowledge across personal, social and ecological dimensions of sustainability and how it can be applied to support transformative learning.
The implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is indispensable for building a sustainable and just future for all humans and our planet. The SDGs are global goals.
The rapidly evolving ocean economy, driven by human needs for food, energy, transportation and recreation, has led to unprecedented pressures on the ocean that are further amplified by climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution.
This paper argues that political representation in transnational civil society networks needs to be investigated as practice with regard to its flexibility, relationality and dialogical agency.
Die Folgen der Pandemie haben schnelles Handeln gefordert und gleichzeitig auch Transformationen in kürzester Zeit ermöglicht. Insbesondere die Digitalisierung ist in einer nicht für möglich gehaltenen Geschwindigkeit vorangeschritten.
The urgent and critical challenges of transforming patterns of behavior from current unsustainable ones are encapsulated in the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
While calls for cross-sectoral collaboration have become a recurrent motif in sustainability-oriented policymaking and research, the practical realization of such processes presents significant challenges.
This paper is an ethnographic essay based on the work experience of one of the authors (da Costa) inside the environmental department of an electric energy producer corporation, between 2010 and 2013, period during which he was part of the technic
There is a need to conduct more diverse cross‐case analyses in the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) literature which originated in the United States, to show how key concepts, such as a windows‐of‐opportunity and the role of policy entrepreneurs, m
Climate change is a paradigmatic example of systemic risk. Recently, proposals for large‐scale interventions—carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM)—have started to redefine climate governance strategies.
Systemic risks, as opposed to conventional risks, bear the danger of destroying entire systems. Their understanding and governance remain a serious challenge.
Aerosol radiative properties using recently available high-quality columnar aerosol data collected at several AERONET sites in South Asia, with a focus on pollution outflow from continental South Asia observed over Hanimaadhoo in Maldives, a small
Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) inversions for estimating natural carbon fluxes typically do not allow for adjustment of fossil fuel CO2 emissions, despite significant uncertainties in emission inventories and inadequacies in the specification of
In order to advance ongoing efforts in the (still emerging) field of marine restoration, different forms of knowledge must be combined: not only the biological and technical aspects, but also the social and cultural dimensions of marine restoratio
Die von der Bundesregierung im Juni 2018 eingesetzte Expertenkommission zum Kohleausstieg und dem damit einhergehenden Strukturwandel zog enormes öffentliches Interesse auf sich.
With the increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in industrial production, the risks and opportunities of these technologies for environmental sustainability as well as political awareness about these risks and opportun
Würde Zukunft öfter im Plural gedacht, müsste er für
die Städte stehen. Denn dort war Zukunft schon
immer divers, wurde zwischen Politik und Bürgerschaft
ausgehandelt.
In this perspectives piece, an interdisciplinary team of social science researchers considers the implications of Covid-19 for the politics of sustainable energy transitions.
Technological and policy solutions for transitioning to a fossil-free society exist, many countries could afford the transition, and rational arguments for rapid climate action abound. Yet effective action is still lacking.
This article explores the role of energy in regionalization processes, assessing the case of natural gas finds in the Eastern Mediterranean (East Med). It makes three observations.
Climate change has become a major political concern for many people. There has been a lot of talk and no lack of calls for action. But to what extent does the world, and particularly Europe, also do the walking?
Understanding the physical and biogeochemical interactions and feedbacks between the ocean and atmosphere is a vital component of environmental and Earth system research.
In the moment of preparation of this paper, the world is still globally in grip of the Corona (COVID-19) crisis, and the need to understand the broader overall framework of the crisis increases.
The COVID-19 outbreak was neither unpredictable nor unforeseen, yet it blind-sided policymakers when it emerged, leading to unprecedented global restrictions on human activity and almost certainly triggering the first global economic contraction s
Based on an extensive synthesis of semi-structured interviews, media content analysis, and reviews, this article conducts a qualitative meta-analysis of more than 560 sources of evidence to identify 38 visions associated with seven different low-c
With the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) failing to provide adequate support to climate victims, vulnerable countries, nongovernmental organizations and affected communities are increasingly ex
Although radiation protection is challenged by many uncertainties, there is no systematic study investigating the definitions and types of these uncertainties.
Not only is the climate changing, but so is global climate governance. Climate policy initiatives have proliferated within and beyond the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) regime in a polycentric pattern.
Decarbonising heating supply is an important part of the global energy transition, and a vital step towards mitigating climate change. We analyse the transformative potential of German and UK heating sector decarbonisation policies.
Research software has become a central asset in academic research. It optimizes existing and enables new research methods, implements and embeds research knowledge, and constitutes an essential research product in itself.
We present a Strengths, Vulnerability, and Intervention Assessment related to Digital Threats (SVIDT) method, which provides a problem structuring and decision support for organizational vulnerability and resilience management with respect to chan
International political economy (IPE) has explained financial globalization as the result of states deciding to open up and liberalize domestic financial systems.
The idea that universities should become entrepreneurial, commercialized, private commodities or should serve politicians and governmental agencies has been promoted by the university–industry–government relationship-based Triple Helix approach an
Relational thinking has recently gained increasing prominence across academic disciplines in an attempt to understand complex phenomena in terms of constitutive processes and relations.
Der Einfluss der Digitalisierung auf Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft ist omnipräsent und kann nicht losgelöst von der Debatte zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung betrachtet werden.
A multi-scale modelling system was developed to provide hourly NOx concentration fields at a building-resolving scale in the urban area of Modena, a city in the middle of the Po Valley (Italy), one of the most polluted areas in Europe.