Abstract
Frontispiece: Transactions in Energy and Sustainability offers a venue for scholarly dialogue on energy and sustainability issues, through the lens of human–nature interactions, to generate insights that will advance the SGD agenda and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy has been a cornerstone of economic growth and social development globally. The massive use of fossil energy since the Industrial Revolution has been the main cause for a series of problems facing the human society nowadays, such as environmental pollution, ecological degradation, and climatic change. Addressing these challenges not only requires urgent and persistent actions by a wide spectrum of state and non-state actors, but also entails joint (academic) efforts from many fields of research, including both natural and human sciences. This urgency is increasingly acknowledged by the international community. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, for instance, call for comprehensive understanding and systematic solutions of energy and sustainability research, both theoretically, methodologically, and empirically.
As the world’s largest energy producer, energy consumer, and carbon emitter, China is a key player in energy and climate geopolitics. In the past decade, China has emerged as a global leader in energy and sustainability transformation, with concrete actions to advance energy decarbonization, climate mitigation, and sustainable development, through national campaigns such as ecological civilization construction and the “dual-carbon” (carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060) commitments. It is fair to say that China, in terms of the sheer size of the change, the unprecedented pace of change and the diversity and complexity of change, has hardly any counterpart in contemporary world. Nevertheless, and unfortunately, what exactly is happening in China and why remains largely a myth to the external world. Numerous studies on China’s energy and sustainability transitions have indeed offered pieces of the puzzle, but they somehow failed to assemble a complete overall image of China. As humorously put by Daniel A. Bell: “A joke about China is that one can say anything about it without getting it right. Another joke is that one can say anything about it without getting it wrong.” To understand China, we need to look both “outwards” and “inwards.” Looking outwards, China needs to be situated within global geopolitical and economic dynamics. Through rigorous and critical comparative analysis with other countries, this approach enables the disclosure of the macrostructural drivers and power relations that perpetuate China’s contemporary transitions. Looking inwards, China’s innovative thinking and praxis in arenas of energy and sustainability need to be culturally, politically, and historically contextualized. It is only through such contextualization that we can capture the deep and subtle dynamics of China’s social and ecological transformations.
The primary aim of Transactions in Energy and Sustainability, is to provide a platform for advancing novel and integrated knowledge in all areas of research in the field of energy and sustainability, through the case of China. Our journal places an emphasis on comparative and contextual examination on the intertwining processes of China’s energy and sustainability transitions. Grounded in the rich literature of China’s science and social science research, our journal intends to make the rich pool of localized knowledge accessible to a much wider audience. Our journal offers a venue for scholarly dialogue on energy and sustainability issues, to generate insights from, on, and beyond China.
Transactions in Energy and Sustainability encourages interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches and innovative thinking that examine energy and sustainability issues through the lens of human–nature interactions. Our journal distinguishes itself by its (g)locally oriented perspective of China’s energy and sustainability transition, one that stresses both global geopolitical and economic dynamics and localized practices and knowledge.
Transactions in Energy and Sustainability covers a range of topics including energy transition, sustainable development, climate change, energy geopolitics, energy economics, energy governance, and so on. We at Transactions in Energy and Sustainability welcome all such advances and varieties. But this is not all. With the launch of Transactions in Energy and Sustainability, we explicitly intend to unite this group and feature this work.