Dear Colleagues,

Mitigating climate change is one of the most strategic challenges that require immediate attention to safeguard sustainability in the supply chain and improve the quality of life of vulnerable populations. Particular attention needs to be addressed to how constraining the consumption and production of resources can help to keep global temperature below 2°C using different carbon trading policies, such as carbon subsidy, carbon offset policies, carbon cap, carbon tax, and carbon cap-and-trade. There is a new avenue of research that is opening on carbon trading at the national and regional levels since the promulgation of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12 to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns both at industrial and household levels. There is a need to address energy and waste consumption practices and production conditions in the supply chain as well as how consumer cultural imperatives are important and have an impact on the determination of carbon pricing initiatives. The critical role of international institutions and national governments is heightened, especially when energy companies focus on the best course of action they can take to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. Several studies have noted that a reduced carbon footprint improves the climate change conditions. Within this context, personal carbon trading demonstrates the strategic importance of sustainable development through speedier energy use and saving behaviors in households and the use of personal and public transportation. Recently, many practitioners’ articles have highlighted the importance of cutting emissions in the energy and waste sectors. SDG goal 11 supports the development of the smart city approaches, which is associated with reducing greenhouse gases and aims to establish a carbon pricing mechanism. It has become important after the UN SDGs, especially goal 12, to consider how production and consumption more deeply affect consumer choice of product and how today’s consumer consumption patterns affect tomorrow’s demands of future generations to support sustainable development. When should firms approach consumers through carbon tax incentives and eco-labels? There is a need to examine how human aspects of consumption are important to get deeper insights into customer and consumer interest and commitment towards carbon trading policies.

This Special Issue aims to explore the state-of-the-art carbon trading research in different industries, enabling a sustainable supply chain and supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In this Special Issue, we encourage authors to submit case studies, empirical surveys, systematic literature reviews, qualitative and quantitative approaches, longitudinal analyses, mathematical and simulation modeling approaches that emphasize evaluation and assessment, optimization, and simulations using system dynamics approaches. The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Challenges of reducing carbon footprint in the global value chain;
• Role of carbon trading policies in planning and implementing reverse logistics;
• Cap-and-trade and its impact on firms’ climate action;
• Carbon management strategies and business models for the carbon market;
• Is a supplier with a lower carbon impact better or only chosen based on price and quality;
• Investigate drivers and barriers to sustainable carbon markets in Industry 4.0;
• Cleaner production technology mobilization for sustainable carbon trading systems;
• Best management practices in reverse logistics to support carbon trading;
• Green financial supply chain and firm climate action and carbon pricing preparation;
• Linking financial supply chain management and industrial partnership to implement sustainable consumption and production;
• The shift of carbon tax policy to carbon trading, leading towards supply chain risk;
• Challenges of cap-and-trade in the international carbon market;
• Policies that could support the deployment of low-carbon technologies for the green economy;
• Emissions trading schemes (ETSs) and circular business models and innovation;
• Emissions trading schemes (ETSs) and supply chain management;
• How companies manage competition with carbon pricing and developing an internal and external offset strategy;
• Incentive frameworks for personal carbon trading and institutional initiatives in developing countries. 

Dr. Usama Awan
Prof. Dr. Suha Al-Alawi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• emissions trading scheme
• cap-and-trade
• financial supply chain
• carbon footprint
• low-carbon technologies
• carbon taxes
• business models for the carbon market
• carbon pricing preparation
• carbon management strategies