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This chapter discusses the global challenge to reduce greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions to net zero by 2050. It explains what net zero means and how it is calculated, together with some of the debate around the suitability of the target to maintain global warming levels within ‘acceptable’ boundaries. The chapter then presents some of the opportunities and challenges that transitioning towards net zero will pose to countries and their inhabitants, in terms of changes to policies, products, processes and behaviours that will be required to attain the target. It then discusses the need for a strategy to achieve net zero across different sectors of society and provides a few suggestions of tools and concepts that could be adopted to support the changes necessary, such as planning for change, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), integrated reporting and the circular economy. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the need for the net zero target and how it is our collective responsibility to support the challenging transition to net zero for the benefit of all.

Industrial strategy has been officially out of favour at the national level since the 1980s, although some form of tacit industrial policy has existed for many years under different governments, often partial and usually not codified in official format. The new national Industrial Strategy of 2017 sets out a much clearer intent for how the 2016 Conservative government wants to rebuild the UK industrial base through both national level activity and through local and regional strategies.

At a regional level this is not so new, since the North East has had a variety of regional development strategies and innovation strategies dating back to the 1990s, associated with the implementation of the EU Structural Funds, with the former Regional Development Agency and now with the North East Local Enterprise Partnerships. These typically involved many aspects of the new local Industrial Strategies, so what’s new and what should the region be doing?

The purpose of this paper is to progress operations management theory and practice by organising contributions to knowledge production, in industrial sustainability, from disparate researcher communities. It addresses the principal question “What scholarly dialogues can be explicated in the emerging research field of industrial sustainability?” and sub-questions: what are the descriptive characteristics of the evidence base? and what thematic lines of scientific inquiry underpin the body of knowledge?

Using an evidenced-based approach, a systematic review (SR) of 574 articles from 62 peer-reviewed scientific journals associated with industrial sustainability is conducted.

This paper distinguishes three prevailing dialogues in the field of industrial sustainability, and uses Kuhn’s theory of paradigms to propose its pre-paradigmatic scientific status. The three dialogues: “productivity and innovation”, “corporate citizenship” and “economic resilience” are conjectured to privilege efficiency strategies as a mode of incremental reductionism. Industrial sustainability espouses the grand vision of a generative, restorative and net positive economy, and calls for a future research trajectory to address institutional and systemic issues regarding scaling-up and transition, through transformative strategies.

The review is limited by the nature of the inquiries addressed in the literatures by specific researcher communities between 1992 and 2014.

This study performs the first SR in the field of industrial sustainability, synthesises prevailing scholarly dialogues and provides an evaluation of the scientific status of the field.

The study aims to perform an extensive literature review in the area of the maintenance decision analysis (MDA), especially in power generation systems. In the basis of this review, the paper proposes a new model for the MDA which involves a combination of reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS) performance with energy efficiency performance (EEP).

Starting from the opportunity in Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS) by improving the energy efficiency (EE) and using renewable energy for the power generation system, also concerning to the major challenge of maintenance optimization in order to implement maintenance strategy, the maintenance decision-making and energetic efficiency management system (EEMS) have been reviewed. In the context of power generation system's performance, the measurement is also analyzed and identified. Then, the extensive literature review has been performed to compare between RAMS and EEP. And finally, the limitation and gap, where EEP is not yet a complementary consideration during MDA being identified and a new model for the performance-based MDA is proposed.

The new model proposed for the performance-based MDA is able to be used to conduct maintenance decision by utilizing the combination of RAMS and EEP depending on the type of decision required.

There is an opportunity for a maintenance organization of power generation plant to apply this new model proposed for the MDA in order to optimize the maintenance scope and schedule.

The result of work in this paper forms the basis for combining RAMS with EEP as performance-based MDA tools in the context of maintenance of the power generation system.

Speaking on the future energy and feedstock requirements of the chemical industry overall, but including the paint industry, Dr. Peter Caudle, Deputy Director General of the Chemical Industries Association stated recently that short and medium term energy inputs into the U.K. and European chemical industry would be at a much more moderate rate than in the past: “The U.K. position, far from expanding rapidly as a result of our North Sea resources, may remain severely contracted unless there is a significant shift in national energy and industrial strategies towards energy‐intensive and other ‘heavy’ sectors of manufacturing industry,” Dr. Caudle said.

The turbulent phase of COVID-19 has caused uncertainty as governments fail to develop coherent strategies for cutting emissions and are struggling to match the rhetoric of sustainable activities with actions (Barbier & Burgess, 2020; Cawthorn, Kennaugh, & Ferreira, 2021). In the recent past, firms have failed in their plans to decarbonise their key sectors such as the retail sector in the United Kingdom So far, retailers' commitment to achieving net zero emissions has been an important pledge but delivery is nowhere closer to their promises (Henriques, 2020). The firms' climate targets are not going to be met by magic as serious action is needed to fulfil the promises.

Fossil fuels have led to a drastic increase in carbon emissions in the world over the last decade. Firms championing cleaner energy and low carbon technologies are needed to cut emissions. Renewable energy sources such as wind energy can help reducing the dependency of fossil fuels (Boretti, 2020; Ebhota & Jen, 2020). Wind is an indirect form of solar energy which can provide environment-friendly option in uncertain times and can provide long-term sustainability of global economy. Solar energy technologies have the potential to decrease climate change through energy-related emissions (Li, Dai, & Cui, 2020). Increasing energy demand has initiated a focus on using hydrogen from water as a substitute for oil and fossil fuels (Boretti, 2020).

The first part of the chapter discusses theoretical perspectives of sustainable development and environmental performance with regards to three main issues: energy, water and carbon emissions, whereas the later part highlights the importance of solar technology as a low-polluted alternative to fossil fuels in the retail sector. Sustainable development of energy, water and environmental precautions such as reducing carbon emissions are of interest to wider branches of industries including retail, energy and water sector, governmental policymakers, researchers, educators and society. The purpose of this chapter is to increase the debate of the key issues of sustainable development regarding environment, energy and water in the modern times.

Major maintenance projects are often regarded as maintenance activities regardless of the projects' complexity and scale. Consequently, very scarce research attention has hitherto been paid to the critical skills required when undertaking these projects. More specifically, the body of relevant knowledge is deprived of a study focusing on maintenance projects within the energy sector. In view of this shortcoming, this research aims to examine the critical project management (PM) skills required to deliver major maintenance projects within the energy sector.

Based on a quantitative research strategy, this study addressed the knowledge gap through a cross-sectional survey of professionals involved in the delivery of major maintenance projects in the United Kingdom's (UK) energy sector. Data obtained were analyzed via descriptive (e.g. frequencies, mean and standard deviation [SD]) and inferential statistical analyses (One sample t-test and exploratory factor analysis (EFA)).

Out of the 45 PM skills identified in the literature and examined by the respondents, the results obtained from the One sample t-test (based on p (1-tailed) = 0.05) showed that 37 were considered to be at least “important,” accounting for 80.4% of all the skills identified. EFA revealed a clustering of the PM skills items into seven components: “skills related to work scheduling and coordination”; “communication, risk, safety and stakeholder management skills”; “quality assurance skills”; “people management skills”; “skills related to forecasting scope and duration of outage”; “implementation of processes and time management skills” and “technical/engineering skills and experience pertaining to the outage and local site knowledge.”

This study has identified and contributed to the limited state-of-the-art skills project managers must possess to manage major maintenance projects in the energy sector successfully. The findings would be useful to organizations within the energy sector in ensuring that the organizations have suitable personnel in place to deliver major maintenance projects on the organizations' assets.

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a crisis that has hit the European economy and the currently existing systems. To cope with the crisis, Europe has started an investment aiming the energy transition and crisis. Portugal, Spain and Greece have received the approval of their National Recovery Plans from the European Commission, with a definition of spending up to 2026 through the European Union (EU) Next Generation Found. The study investigates whether the Green Deal policies are relaunched by the plans financed and whether the pandemic has changed and conditioned the priorities of the energy transaction. The study uses the lens of corporate social responsability (CSR) and relapse measurable across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Green Deal policies supported by new European investments in the three countries were analyzed through a content analysis (CA) technique to investigate the associated practical and theoretical elements.

The energy theme has a relevance compared to other issues in the investment plans envisaged in Greece, Portugal and Spain. The analysis highlights energy efficiency, sustainable energy and reduction of consumption among the main themes. Energetically, sustainable building plays a central role. The study highlights the relationship between Green Deal policies, CSR, SDGs and management tools adopted.

The study strengthens the relationship between the Green Deal, CSR and SDGs by identifying policies that have already been implemented and theoretical and practical gaps on which politicians and scholars will have to investigate and support in the process of development and continuity of the identified pillars.