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This chapter examines why U.S. offshore wind farms do not exist and identifies sites most suitable for development based on European offshore wind farms. A survey of current literature indicates that U.S. development is stalled due to a lack of government and financial support. The literature identifies common attributes associated with the successful deployment of European offshore farms and provides a basis for a multi-criteria decision analysis of potential U.S offshore wind farm sites. A review of European wind farms indicates that a small, 10–50 MW farm located in shallow waters of less than 20 m might be more successful than previous U.S. development efforts. The review also identifies common European attributes deemed critical for success. These attributes are modified, taking into account unique U.S. factors, and a set of nine critical attributes are derived for use in a multi-criteria decision analysis model of suitable U.S. locations. The nine critical attributes (wind quality, water depth, shore distance, state support, public support, industrial support, population density, weather, and energy costs), along with associated utility function values, are applied to 23 past and current proposed U.S. sites. The model identified three sites, in Galveston Island, TX, Port Isabel, TX, and Block Island, RI, as being most favorable for a small wind farm.

This study investigates what causes businesses to increase their environmental stewardship beyond the governmental standards. This “beyond compliance behavior” is examined by analyzing the influence of organizational slack and institutional pressures in the European paper and paperboard industry. Beyond compliance behavior is measured as the adoption of a sustainable forestry certificate issued by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The longitudinal (10-year period) dataset consists of adoption events per company, their business characteristics and historic socio-economic data per region in the respective European countries. Examination was done by means of an event history analysis using the program “R.” The results show differences between antecedents of compliance and beyond compliance behavior. The authors discuss the results in the light of institutional and stakeholder theories. Due to institutional shifts in environmental demands, adoption of an FSC certificate has become an off-the-shelf compliance answer to legitimacy issues disguised as a progressive environmental stewardship program.

Economic and market-based instruments are not “the” answer for nature-based solutions (NBS) in cities, but they are “part” of the answer. Regulatory instruments are needed when specific behaviors must be avoided. Voluntary instruments may be effective, especially at the local scale, but do not often guarantee the pursued performance result. Economic instruments, if well designed, implemented, and used, often have a comparative advantage in terms of efficiency and performance. They are also a source of funding for financing NBS. Too many policy experts and decision-makers are ready to propose public expenditure and subsidies, including for urban policies, and for policies in favor of natural capital, ecosystems services, and biodiversity. Yet, they too often forget to indicate where the revenues to finance the initiatives must come from, however excellent and ambitious they might be. Without using also economic instruments in the policy portfolio, many objectives for sustainable cities will be much more difficult to achieve, especially in the perspective of the Paris Agreement on climate change and of the UN Agenda 2030 with its Sustainable Development Goals.

Tokenization is a relatively new activity in digital finance. Tokenization, a process that creates a blockchain representation of the underlying instrument, can enhance the standard features and characteristics of assets and securities. Asset and security tokenization produces many benefits. These benefits include reducing issuance and trading costs, lessening dependency on intermediaries, facilitating more liquidity in markets, and providing greater transparency around an asset’s lifecycle for all parties involved. This chapter synthesizes the key characteristics, benefits, processes, tools, and techniques of tokenizing real-world assets. It also provides several examples of current asset-backed token applications to help understand the rapidly growing industry and analyzes future expectations of this new technology.

The objective of this chapter is to identify the key characteristics of Global Services businesses that will thrive and achieve success in the future. These factors are integrated into three main pillars, which we refer to as the Triple-Win. The first and most obvious pillar is technology as a tool. The second pillar is the design and sustainability of the business model, without which the previous factor would be merely a cost and not an investment. And last but not the least, there is the purpose which gives meaning to the proposal, focusing on the human being and their environment. The DIDPAGA business model sits at the intersection of these three elements.

‘Tragedy of the commons’ is a powerful concept to analyse a variety of problems related to environmental sustainability. The commons problem can be solved if individuals behave altruistically. In the business context, this chapter studies the proposition that corporate social responsibility (CSR) can avert the tragedy of the commons by examining one case study in depth: Coca-Cola's bottling operations in Rajasthan, India. In spite of choosing a context favourable to the proposition, the results indicate that CSR does not avert the tragedy of the commons. To address the major environmental challenges, it is essential to develop regulatory regimes with appropriate incentives and ability to enforce sanctions.