About this Research Topic

Background

The world continues to experience significant environmental issues such as global warming, air pollution, water-sea pollution, and deforestation as well as associated health, social, and economic problems due to environmental problems. In the face of these threats, solutions have been discussed intensively since the 1990s in various national and international platforms and summits such as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit (1992), the Kyoto Protocol (1997), and the COP21 Summit in Paris (2015).

The summits point to two main outcomes: (a) the inevitability of catastrophic climate change and global warming, and (b) the need for governments to enact contingency plans to prevent environmental degradation and increase environmental quality. The outcomes were mainly to recommend that authorities implement public-government regulations that can be effective, i.e. in the reduction of CO2 emissions to increase the environmental quality.

On the other hand, it is not clear which energy policy can be implemented more effectively to reduce emissions. Although it is accepted as a general opinion that the CO2 emissions will increase with the use of fossil resources and can be reduced with the consumption of renewable energy resources, scientific research and discussion on how best to achieve this continue.

With the ongoing debate, government regulations are in the direction of increasing the production and consumption of renewable energy resources. Among the leading renewable energy sources, wind and/or solar (hereafter: 'wind/solar’) energy sources are the most emphasized sources in the related literature.

This Research Topic aims to analyze the potential positive and negative contributions of wind/energy sources to environmental quality, and therefore is expected to address the potential solutions to global warming and climate change through the use of wind/solar energy power. In the literature, some work reveals that wind energy is found more competitive and profitable in comparison with other energy sources and that it is effective in reducing total CO2 emissions. Some other works yield that, although both wind and solar energy sources can mitigate total CO2 emissions, the average cost of wind energy is found lower than that of solar energy. The CO2 emissions released by wind turbines, on the other hand, might vary by country, the size of the turbine, configurations of shore versus offshore, and its life cycle. The literature underscores as well the efficiency of solar energy to mitigate the emissions by the underlying fact that its impact on the environment might vary by region and that the efficiency of solar power generation needs to be improved.

The subtopics can be evaluated by observing the association between wind/solar energy and environmental quality to inspect the association and/or co-movements between these renewables and global warming/climate change in continents, countries, and/or regions. We welcome manuscripts that address problem definition, motivation, methodology, data, modeling, outputs, discussion, and policy proposals for todays' and future generations.

The authors are encouraged to address submissions related to, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Environmental economics and management concerning wind/solar energy power
• Climate and global warming and wind/solar energy policy
• International negotiations on climate change and importance of wind/solar energy power
• Environmental benefits of wind/solar energy
• Wind/solar energy and total CO2 emissions
• The potential contribution of wind/solar energy consumption to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Theoretical and practical implications of wind/solar energy policy in terms of SDGs
• Catastrophic climate change and wind/solar energy policy
• Carbon capture and recent wind/solar energy technologies
• Economic and environmental advantages and challenges of wind/solar energy
• Wind/solar energy usage and climate change in urban and rural areas
• Wind/solar energy usage and residential and industrial CO2 emissions
• A comparative analysis of the potential contributions of wind and solar energy powers to environmental quality
• The scenarios to reveal the impacts of current and future wind/solar consumption on sustainability
• The dynamic modeling of sustainability with regard to wind/solar energy through mathematical and/or econometrical approaches

This Research Topic, then, will consider the manuscripts that follow quantitative or qualitative methodologies to analyze the possible positive or negative influences of wind/solar consumption on environmental quality and which can provide policymakers with some relevant, efficient energy-environmental policies.

Keywords: Global Warming, Climate Change, CO2 Emissions, Wind and Solar Energy Consumption, Energy Policy, Environmental Policy

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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