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Today, the demand for renewable energy investments is increasing due to the increase in the world population and the rapid depletion of resources. Renewable energy investments are seen as an area that requires more technical knowledge and experience than nonrenewable energy investments. For this reason, qualified workforce is important in this field. The aim of our study is to reveal the criteria by which renewable energy investments are effective on qualified labor supply. According to the results of our study, in which the analytic hierarchy process method was used, the criterion with the highest weight was determined as “harmonizing universities with undergraduate and graduate level education and internship opportunities.” When this criterion is taken into account, the implementation of policies toward university education in this field together with the renewable energy investments of the countries will positively affect the qualified labor supply.

This chapter will focus on renewable energy investments in sustainable business projects from a strategic management and entrepreneurial perspective. It will be questioned what the concept of energy is/should be from the perspective of managers and entrepreneurs. For this purpose, it will start with the significance of energy for these two viewpoints and persist in its linkage with the requirements of energy acquisitions. The subject of energy and energy investments will be associated with concepts such as sustainability, interaction with environmental factors, and competitiveness. To address these concerns, SWOT analysis, resource dependence model, Porter's five forces analysis, the environmental Kuznets curves hypothesis, and strategy tripod perspective – therefore, resource, industry, and institutional-based approaches – will be examined and interpreted with energy and energy investments. In addition, soft issues related to energy will be discussed from the perspective of the entrepreneur, and it will be emphasized that energy and energy investments should be addressed more comprehensively. As a result of all these efforts, it is aimed to contribute to a more stable system for a sustainable and competitive energy policy.

No carbon gas is released into the atmosphere in electricity production with wind energy. Therefore, this type of energy is significantly environmentally friendly. On the other hand, thanks to wind energy investments, a country can produce its own energy. This reduces the country’s foreign dependency on energy. Due to these positive aspects, increasing wind energy investments is very important for both the social and economic development of the country. The aim of this study is to define the most appropriate government support to improve wind energy investments. In this context, four different criteria are defined in this regard by making a detailed literature review. In the analysis process, fuzzy AHP methodology is considered. Within this framework, the comparative evaluations of three different experts are obtained. The findings indicate that providing loans with low-interest rate is the most appropriate government support for the wind energy investors. Additionally, it is also defined that tax deduction is another important issue for this purpose. However, it is also identified that appropriate location supply and purchase guarantee of the product produced have lower importance in comparison with the others. It is strongly recommended that governments should provide loans to the wind energy investors. This strategy can minimize the problem of high initial cost so that it can be much easier to attract the attention of the investors.

We examine the effect of firm ownership status on three environmentally relevant variables: energy efficiency, toxic emissions, and spending on pollution abatement. Prior research has demonstrated that public firms invest less than private firms and suggests this difference is due pressure from investors to strongly favor short over long-term earnings. We extend this logic to other firm behavior, examining whether publicly owned facilities invest in energy efficiency and pollution reduction differently than privately owned facilities. Using data from the US Census of Manufactures from 1980 to 2009, information on pollution from the Environmental Protection Agency Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) and pollution abatement spending from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey, we find that facilities switching to public ownership are less energy efficient and spend less on pollution abatement than their privately owned counterparts. However, we also find that facilities switching to public ownership have lower toxic emissions than other facilities. We also examine how different sources of external pressures alter these results and find that increased regulatory scrutiny is correlated with increased energy efficiency, toxic emissions, and abatement spending. More concentrated institutional ownership in public firms is associated with lower energy efficiency as is a greater brand focus. These latter results are broadly consistent with the idea that publicly owned firms respond to pressures from investors with a reduced focus on environmentally relevant variables. However, since facilities switching to public ownership have lower toxic emissions, this suggests that there are two competing pressures in publicly owned facilities: cost pressures, consistent with lowered energy efficiency, and public perceptions, consistent with lower toxic emissions, particularly since TRI data became available. In this sense, the combination of ownership and transparency of information appears to influence how firms prioritize different stakeholders.

This chapter strives to evaluate the impact of tourist arrival on energy consumption, air pollution, gross domestic product (GDP), and foreign direct investment to suggest strategies for further tourism development. Relevant data from Taiwan are analyzed, entailing tourist arrivals, GDP, carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, and capital investment. It tests four hypotheses using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller single root test, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model, and time series econometrics of Granger causality. This study finds that tourist arrival is positively related to energy consumption and GDP, whereas it negatively relates to carbon dioxide emission and capital investment. In consideration of a negative relationship between tourist arrival and direct investment, this study suggests devising timely research agendas on carrying capacity and service quality in the mind of international tourists to see if additional investment in tourism infrastructures is needed.

With the increase in population, the energy needs of countries are also increasing. These countries have difficulties in meeting these increasing needs. Countries that cannot meet this need have to import energy from abroad. This situation adversely affects the current account balance of countries. Nuclear energy investments allow countries to obtain their own energy, although there are some criticisms. In this framework, while some countries in the world increase their nuclear energy investments, some countries do not have any nuclear power plants (NPP). There are 32 such countries where nuclear energy projects are running till date. Therefore, it is very important to determine the socio-economic variables of countries that have nuclear energy investments. In this context, a detailed literature analysis will be made first to determine socio-economic criteria. Then, the importance weights of these factors will be calculated using the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method. The profiles of the countries that make nuclear energy investments demonstrate that education level is the most essential socio-economic factor for the improvement of nuclear energy investments. Also, income inequality is another important variable in this regard. However, consumption behaviour and saving behaviour have the lowest weights.

Bioenergy remains the largest branch of renewable energy, and microalgae are a promising object of research among other types of biomasses whose scale for energy purposes is increasing. On the other hand, the growth of global energy production and urbanization, which results in high rates of municipal waste and wastewater generation, requires the development of integrated technologies that allow waste to be disposed of as fully as possible. Sustainable investments in the production of energy by various technologies are one of the methods to solve this complex problem. In this chapter, we study the methods of microalgae utilization of nutrients from wastewater and by-product liquid waste of sustainable investments from microalgae by hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) technology. Wastewater has a complex composition, and the treatment of nitrogen and phosphorus and other biogenic elements, as well as heavy metals, using biological objects is optimal and cost-effective. Also the water phase after HTL is a by-product that has limited energy value. Biofuel investments have higher growth rates and at the same time do not compete with the investments in fossil fuels. Biofuel investments' cost of seaweed fuel can be reduced through high-value-added related products, such as food and feed additives, and pharmaceutical and cosmetic products.

The aim of this study is to examine the significant factors to improve the green nuclear energy investments in the emerging economies. For this purpose, balanced scorecard-based criteria are weighted with DEMATEL methodology. The findings demonstrate that technological improvement and financial issues are the most important issues for the improvement of the green nuclear energy investments in these countries. Nuclear energy working with thorium can also be obtained with proton accelerator technology that is currently quite expensive. Because of this problem, the investors are not willing to make investments for green nuclear energy projects. Hence, emerging countries should make the necessary technological investments to have proton accelerator technologies. With the help of this condition, it will be possible to reduce the cost of green nuclear energy projects which attracts the attention of the investors. This situation has a powerful contribution for the sustainable economic development of these countries.