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This article aims to establish a dynamic Energy Performance Contract (EPC) risk allocation model for commercial buildings based on the theory of Incomplete Contract. The purpose is to fill the policy vacuum and allow stakeholders to manage risks in energy conservation management by EPCs to better adapt to climate change in the building sector.

The article chooses a qualitative research approach to depict the whole risk allocation picture of EPC projects and establish a dynamic EPC risk allocation model for commercial buildings in China. It starts with a comprehensive literature review on risks of EPCs. By modifying the theory of Incomplete Contract and adopting the so-called bow-tie model, a theoretical EPC risk allocation model is developed and verified by interview results. By discussing its application in the commercial building sector in China, an operational EPC three-stage risk allocation model is developed.

This study points out the contract incompleteness of the risk allocation for EPC projects and offered an operational method to guide practice. The reasonable risk allocation between building owners and Energy Service Companies can realize their bilateral targets on commercial building energy-saving benefits, which makes EPC more attractive for energy conservation.

Existing research focused mainly on static risk allocation. Less research was directed to the phased and dynamic risk allocation. This study developed a theoretical three-stage EPC risk allocation model, which provided the theoretical support for dynamic EPC risk allocation of EPC projects. By addressing the contract incompleteness of the risk allocation, an operational method is developed. This is a new approach to allocate risks for EPC projects in a dynamic and staged way.

This article aims to optimise energy use and consumption by integrating Lean Six Sigma methodology with the ISO 50001 energy management system standard in an Irish dairy plant operation.

This work utilised Lean Six Sigma methodology to identify methods to measure and optimise energy consumption. The authors use a single descriptive case study in an Irish dairy as the methodology to explain how DMAIC was applied to reduce energy consumption.

The replacement of heavy oil with liquid natural gas in combination with the new design of steam boilers led to a CO₂ footprint reduction of almost 50%.

A further longitudinal study would be useful to measure and monitor the energy management system progress and carry out more case studies on LSS integration with energy management systems across the dairy industry.

The novelty of this study is the application of LSS in the dairy sector as an enabler of a greater energy-efficient facility, as well as the testing of the DMAIC approach to meet a key objective for ISO 50001 accreditation.

With more cities aiming to achieve climate neutrality, identifying the funding to support these plans is essential. The purpose of this paper is to exploit the present of a structured green bonds framework in Sweden to investigate the typology of abatement projects Swedish municipalities invested in and understand their effectiveness.

Marginal abatement cost curves of the green bond measures are constructed by using the financial and abatement data provided by municipalities on an annual basis.

The results highlight the economic competitiveness of clean energy production, measured in abatement potential per unit of currency, even when compared to other emerging technologies that have attracted the interest of policymakers. A comparison with previous studies on the cost efficiency of carbon capture storage reveals that clean energy projects, especially wind energy production, can contribute to the reduction of emissions in a more efficient way. The Swedish carbon tax is a good incentive tool for investments in clean energy projects.

The improvement concerning previous applications is twofold: the authors expand the financial considerations to include the whole life-cycle costs, and the authors consider all the greenhouse gases. This research constitutes a prime in using financial and environmental data produced by local governments to assess the effectiveness of their environmental measures.

This study investigates an under-researched yet fundamental question of how a developed country multinational enterprises (DMNE) perceives and manages political risks when undertaking infrastructure projects in the emerging markets (EMs).

The authors use an abduction-based qualitative research approach to analyze six international project operations of a multinational enterprise originating from Finland in five EMs.

The findings suggest that the overall nature of political risks in EMs is not the same, except few political risk factors that are visible in most EMs. Consequently, the applied risk management mechanisms vary between EMs, except with few common mechanisms. The authors develop an integrative analytical framework of political risk management based on the findings.

This paper is one of the first studies to identify political risk factors for western MNEs while undertaking international project operations and link them to reduction mechanisms used by them. The authors go beyond the notion of risk being conceptualized at a general level and evaluate 20 specific political risk factors referred to in extant literature. The authors further link these political risk factors with both social exchange and transaction cost theories conceptually as well as empirically. Finally, the authors develop a relatively comprehensive analytical framework of political risk management based on the case projects' findings that combine several strands of literature, including the social exchange theory, transaction cost theory, international market entry, project management and finance literature streams.

Until recently, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, whose members consist of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, has not significantly focused on the green transition. Specifically, wind energy development has made minimal progress relative to that of other regions.

The abundance of cheap fossil fuels in the region has not incentivized renewable energy development, and where this has taken place solar technologies are often preferred.

However, lower technology costs together with lost investment opportunities – also common elsewhere in the world, has increased the pressure on the GCC region from developers. This work qualitatively addresses the challenges and the strategies for the wind development in the area. It focuses on the analysis of different proposed type of investments – driven by a state-supported proposed fund – such as utility-scale investments, industry-specific investments, manufacturing investments and regional accelerators.

The work also suggests that Gulf sovereign wealth funds should act as the lead investors under new schemes, such as joint ventures, for wind development in the GCC, using their wealth to offering their populations with new sources of employment as well as energy that is sustainable.

Recognising the growing importance of environmental and sustainable activities and the role of communication strategies in soliciting their financing, this work investigates the influence of message framing, green emphasis and quantitative information on the probability of green crowdfunding campaigns' success.

This analysis is based on crowdfunding campaigns published between 2015 and 2020 on the Indiegogo platform in the category “Community projects – Environment”. The study develops an in-depth qualitative content analysis of the projects before performing an empirical examination to determine funding causes.

Communication strategies (message framing, green emphasis and quantitative goals) affect funding success. However, project category moderates the impact of message framing and green emphasis on campaign success. While positive framing increases agri-food campaign success, negative framing is more effective for clean energy and climate preservation projects. Moreover, indication of a quantitative goal and a marked green emphasis in a project's presentation increase campaign success, but a too marked green emphasis is only effective for agri-food projects.

Green entrepreneurs and campaign managers must work carefully on their projects' communication, accounting for the type of product proposed, emphasising green components in its description and utilising quantitative information to present future goals. These strategies maximise backers' responses and enable entrepreneurs to obtain funding. The authors’ findings may be extended to other contexts, including the banking sector, to craft effective communication strategies for green financial products.

By applying framing theory in a new context (i.e. the online financing of green entrepreneurs), this study identifies new campaign success determinants and provides evidence for the moderating role of project category. Furthermore, the study highlights the need to develop different communication strategies for social and environmental-oriented projects.

The purpose of this article is to study green banking practices, its methods of adoption and importance of practicing green banking. This study also includes the role and contribution of banks in environmental sustainability and UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The current research paper is conceptual in nature, based on a thorough literature review, websites of financial institutions and literature evaluations among other sources. This study has been supplemented by a variety of research journal articles. The websites of many banks including SBI (State Bank of India) and MayBank (Malaysia) were used and reviewed to know about various green banking practices both nationally and internationally and their contribution toward sustainability.

The devastating effects of recent flooding, droughts and extreme temperatures that several people all over the world have experienced compelled everyone to begin thinking about global warming and its consequences, and to do everything that can be done to address this problem. Governments, businesses and individuals all play a part in preventing global warming and creating a more sustainable world. People have to deal with financial institutions, particularly banks, which play a vital role in this environment by assisting in the development of a robust and successful low-carbon economics. They should make more use of environmental data when extending credit and making investment decisions. The project will assist them in proactively improving their environmental performance while also adding long-term value to their company. Businesses having a bigger carbon output may be viewed as riskier in the future, and banks may shy away from funding such businesses in favor of innovative technology solutions that absorb or reduce carbon emissions. As a result, green banking is the order of the day, a source for sustainable development and it will undoubtedly benefit banks, industries as well as the environment at large.

The theoretical implications can be summed in the following points: (1) there is no universally accepted framework for green or sustainable banking so far. However, green banking practices are at different stages of development across countries. As per the case of India, green banking practices are at a development phase in India, and green processes have a significant impact on sustainable development. (2) The study is one of the first of its kind in the academic literature as it links green banking practices with sustainability besides discussing green banking practices of the top public sector Bank of India and top commercial bank of Malaysia. Despite the significant contributions made by this study, many disadvantages should be addressed for future research. The present work was chosen for comfort, it was restricted to green banking practices of two banks only, which limits conclusion and interpretation of outcome to some extent Future research can be conducted by a comparative study with the top green banks or with the cleanest country of the world or green banking practices by those banks toward sustainability in that country can also be a good area for research

Managerial implication: The study is extremely helpful to the banking industry in determining the scope of green banking initiatives in sustainable development. This study is a prime study in India to interrelate banking industry towards sustainability and two UN SDGs besides green banking practices of banks. This paper has noted the areas where the banks can make progress for the greener, sustainable economics. It has also aided the banking industry in identifying areas for development so that it may focus on improving social satisfaction and satisfaction of stakeholders across its operating areas. The study is also very helpful for banks to comprehend how vital these green initiatives, especially green processes, are to improve sustainability.

The study will serve as a gauge for banking actions toward greener nations and a greener world since these are the efforts toward Carbon Free World, Efforts for controlling global warming, efforts for the greener planet in general which undoubtedly is a significant long-term service to society a reason for better climate and better tomorrow.

This paper identifies the need for green banking in sustainability. This article also summarizes the notion of green banking besides outlining some methods and analyzing green banking initiative by SBI (State bank of India) of India, MayBank of Malaysia & UNSDG .

The purpose of this paper is to enlarge the body of knowledge on research through design (RtD) methods that can be employed by landscape architects and others working on (but not limited to) sustainable energy transition.

A specific approach to RtD – qualitative landscape structure analysis (QLSA) – is introduced and illustrated by means of diagrams and photographs. Two case studies showcase the application of QLSA for research on solar parks in the Netherlands and research on wind turbines in the Alpine foothills in Southern Germany.

The case studies show how RtD can help to define design principles for large solar parks and arrangement of wind turbines in particular landscape types in the Netherlands and Germany, respectively. In doing so, RtD can help to expand the breadth of spatial research beyond well-established methods such as multi-criteria decision analysis and environmental impact assessment.

The paper provides insights into contemporary RtD in two countries and affirms the importance of such research with regard to landscape transformations while starting to define a research niche for landscape architects and other environmental designers working on the topic of sustainable energy transition.

Under the dual pressure of resources and environment, many countries have focused on the role of railways in promoting low-carbon development of integrated transportation and of even the whole society. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive study on methods to improve railway energy efficiency in other national railways and achievements made by China’s railways in the past practice, and then to propose ways in which in the future China’s railways could rationally select the path of improving energy efficiency regarding the needs of the nation's ever-shifting development and carry out the re-engineering for mechanism innovation in energy conservation and emission reduction process.

This paper first studies other national railways that have tried to promote the improvement of railway energy efficiency by the ways of technology, management and structural reconstruction to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. Among them, the effect of structural energy conservation and emission reduction has become more prominent. It has become the main energy conservation and emission reduction measure adopted by foreign railway sectors. The practice of energy conservation and emission reduction of railways in various countries has tended to shift from a technical level to a structural one.

Key aspects in improving energy efficiency include re-optimization of energy structure, re-innovation of energy-saving technologies and optimization of transportation organization. Path selection includes continuing to promote electrified railway construction, increasing the use of new and renewable energy sources, and promoting the reform of railway transportation organizations.

This paper provides further challenges and research directions in the proposed area and has referential value for the methodologies, approaches for practice in a Chinese context. To achieve the expected goals, relevant supporting policies and measures need to be formulated, including actively guiding integrated transportation toward railway-oriented development, promoting innovation in energy-saving and emission reduction mechanisms and strengthening policy incentives, focusing on improving the energy efficiency of railways through market behavior. At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to new phenomena in the railway industry for track and analysis.

This paper aims to examine the comovement among green bonds, energy commodities and stock market to determine the advantages of adding green bonds to a diversified portfolio.

Generic 1 Natural Gas and Energy Select SPDR Fund are used as proxies to measure energy commodities, bonds index of S&P Dow Jones and Bloomberg Barclays MSCI are used to represent green bonds and the New York Stock Exchange is considered to measure the stock market. Granger causality test, wavelet analysis and network analysis are applied to daily price for the select markets from August 26, 2014, to March 30, 2021.

Results from the Granger causality test indicate no causality between any pair of variables, while cross wavelet transform and wavelet coherence analysis confirm strong coherence at a high scale during the pandemic, validating comovement among the three asset classes. In addition, network analysis further corroborates this connectedness, implying a strong association of the stock market with the energy commodity market.

This study offers new evidence of the temporal association among the US stock market, energy commodities and green bonds during the COVID-19 crisis. It presents a novel approach that measures and evaluates comovement among the constituent series, simultaneously using both wavelet and network analysis.