Dear Colleagues,

What strategies should be used to accelerate decarbonization of our western economies, and those of the developing world?  Should change be driven by demand, entrepreneurship and innovation or through incentives provided by government policy and regulation?  Early adopted technologies in the low-carbon energy domain were biomass, gas, onshore and offshore wind, solar PV and storage.  These technologies have been heavily backed with large funds for research and development.  Wind and solar, emerged as early favourites because they are easy to deploy, but they are not baseload, dispatchable technologies.  Moreover, they are also adversely affected by changes in the weather or climate change.  Increased penetration of wind and solar PV technologies rely on back-up technologies involving storage facilities or a reliance on fossil fuel (gas or coal), nuclear, geothermal or hydroelectric power stations.  The next wave of technologies hitting the investment headlines are carbon sequestration and hydrogen.  These technologies however are criticized, however, as having the interests of the oil and gas industry at heart, rather than encouraging true adaptation and resilience measures.  

The future of low-carbon energy could be envisioned as a decentralized multi-vector energy system. However, without one easy solution and the energy mix being different in different regions, how can we develop the universal implementation of a Net-Zero scenario?  It therefore remains to be discovered if society can truly meet the challenges ahead.  Key questions need to be asked, for example; how do we decide what are the most economic pathways to achieve the Net-Zero goals? What are the technologies we should be developing, but have not?  What are the adaptation and resilience measures needed in the future? What are the roadblocks to transitioning to a net-zero world? What are the economics and governmental policies that encourage this to happen? How can we forecast and plan for future energy demand? How can we solve the problems of energy poverty and grow or maintain a stable modern economy for everyone? This special issue seeks case-studies, reviews or research papers which examine how our society and businesses can successfully transition to meet Net-Zero 2050 ambitions.

Dr. Philip J. Ball
Guest Editor

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• energy-mix
• energy vectors
• low-carbon
• strategy
• net-zero
• sustainability
• regulation
• resilience
• adaptation
• life cycle assessment