Editorial—Green Energy and Environmental Technology

We live in a material world, where climate promises have not yet been delivered. The ways we explore the Earth and its ecosystems are fundamental to the most diverse aspects of our future.

Therefore, if we are to embrace sustainability—minimize environmental impacts and be economically competitive—paradigm changes around energy use and waste disposal must be ubiquitous and emerging. That is, actions, as usual, cannot continue. We should begin forthwith.

In fact, in the past, intensive fossil energy use and poor waste management were accepted as necessary evil. Today, it is imperative that we apply the predicted aphorism—“in nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed”, and that we transform our ignorance and negligence into economically viable and environmentally sustainable alternatives.

However, this premise has so far been woefully underexplored. As such, new measures should project a much broader smart network than traditional approaches of our relationship with energy and wastes. Notwithstanding, they should also represent a shift in how we think about sustainability, from a resilient and competitive perspective.

In this road ahead, consumption society models under innovative approaches have been proposed as promising technological avenues, and are now becoming proactive in adopting strategies to better management of energy and wastes.

It is through integrative and intensifier routes that green energy and waste reuse can generate promising opportunities, in terms of new energy sources, food/feeds, chemicals, fertilizers and materials.

However, significant investment should be made in such a transformation; it is indisputable that this transition must be knowledge-based.

Therefore, this new Journal you have before you is timely once focuses on gathering and transferring detailed technical-scientific information on key issues of green energy and environmental technology. All aspects involving science, engineering and technology, besides issues related to policy discussions and innovation and intellectual property are welcome.

Our mission is to contribute to dissemination of knowledge in this research field aiming to find ways of saving our resources, reducing the chances of future failures, speeding up the consolidation process and, therefore, the development of sustainable circular economies in the world.