About this Research Topic

Background

The Topic Editors would like to warmly welcome members of The International Society for Energy Transition Studies (ISETS) and other non-member researchers to contribute to this dedicated Research Topic collaborating on the shared objectives to facilitate the engagement and the advancement of research centered around Digital Economy, Energy Transition, and Climate Change in the Post-Covid-19 Era.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, international energy prices have fluctuated dramatically, energy supply and demand have undergone a historic shift and the energy system has been thrown into disorder and turmoil. In response to the major changes in the world’s energy system and climate change, green, low-carbon, efficient and renewable have become common choices for energy transition around the world. In the post-Covid-19 era, how to accelerate the clean use of fossil energy and promote the transformation and upgrading of energy structure is an important challenge commonly faced by countries around the world. As a result of the Covid-19 outbreak, the lifestyles, production methods, economic systems, and governance models formed in the industrial era over the past century are undergoing accelerated changes. Covid-19 has the potential to become an important propellant for humanity to move from the era of the industrial economy to the era of the digital economy. The new industries and new models represented by the digital economy, empowered by digital technology to traditional industries, have realized industrial refinement, automation, and intelligent development, greatly reduced energy and resources and other factor inputs and provided extremely advantageous conditions for global industrial upgrading, energy transition and climate improvement. In the post-Covid-19 era, the uncertainties faced by countries around the world are increasing and the frequency of policy adjustments in various countries is accelerating. More and more countries are focusing their attention on science and technology innovation, digital infrastructure construction and digital industry chain reshaping, aiming to promote the development of digital technology and accelerate the global digital economy in the direction of comprehensiveness, intelligence, and greenness.

In order to achieve environmental protection and carbon neutrality, countries around the world have an urgent need to transform and upgrade their energy structures. In the contemporary context of the rapid development of the digital economy, the digital economy plays an important role in the value chain of almost all industries with the advantages of massive data and digital technology, and has a significant digital economy "empowerment" effect. The widespread use of digital technologies in energy, manufacturing, agriculture and land use, construction, services, and transportation can effectively reduce global CO2 emissions and have far-reaching impacts on both the supply and demand sides of various industries. In the post-Covid-19 era, the global economy is slowly recovering and digital technology innovation will further accelerate the integration of the digital economy with the real economy, which provides important technical support for the global industrial chain upgrade, energy transition and climate improvement. Digital technology can both promote the integration and penetration in the field of energy consumption, realize the simultaneous improvement of energy utilization efficiency and transformation of energy consumption mode, and effectively promote the green and low-carbon development of countries around the world.

Since the digital economy has developed rapidly in recent years, new data science techniques and artificial intelligence models have been widely used in the energy economy and climate economy, such as crude oil price forecasting, electricity price forecasting, commodity price forecasting, carbon price forecasting, and air quality prediction. Artificial intelligence methods and traditional econometric regression methods complement each other and help to examine the relationship between the digital economy, energy transition, and climate change in a comprehensive and in-depth manner. In this context, promoting the deep integration of energy consumption and digital technology and accelerating the transformation of energy structure is an important tool to achieve the carbon neutrality goal.

Potential topics include, but are not confined to, the following areas:
• Industrial digital transformation and energy transition
• Industrial digital transformation and climate change
• The measurement of the digital economy scale
• Energy transition and climate change in the post-Covid-19 era
• Linear or non-linear impacts of digital technology on energy transition and climate change
• Digital infrastructure construction and energy efficiency
• Energy transition and its driving factors
• Climate change in the post-Covid-19 era
• Digital economy governance and climate change
• Applications of machine learning in the digital economy, energy transition, and climate change
• Applications of other advanced analytical techniques in the digital economy, energy transition, and climate change

Keywords: Digital economy, Energy transition, Machine learning, Climate change, Post-Covid-19 era

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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