Systematic literature review of сarbon-neutral economy concept

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to study trends in the development of scientific interest in the issue of implementing a carbon-neutral economy. The authors performed a bibliometric analysis of the publications indexed in the Scopus database using VOSviewer 1.6.16 software and Microsoft Excel. This analysis contributes to determining prospects for transitioning to a carbon-neutral economy and priority areas requiring special attention to accelerate this process. The obtained results of the study of the patterns of the development of the carbon-neutral economy indicate that this concept has a dynamic development, which traces the prerequisites for the formation of a powerful scientific school that investigates the influence of changes in the level of energy efficiency in the process of carbon-neutral development of the national economy. Analysis of the dynamics of publication activity demonstrates a reasonably rapid growth in the number of publications. From 1992 to March 2023, the average growth rate of published research results in the analyzed field was 28.50%. A comparison of subject areas in the study of the carbon-neutral economy shows the predominance of energy, ecology, and socio-economic studies. As a result of the bibliometric analysis of 654 publications indexed by the scientometric database Scopus during 1992-2023 on the topic of the carbon-neutral economy using the software VOSViewer v. 1.6.10, six scientific clusters were identified, which study the possibilities of building an economic system with minimal carbon emissions, taking into account the technical, technological, climatic, social and economic aspects of this issue. However, there is an urgent need to study the organizational and economic mechanisms of replacing non-renewable energy resources with renewable ones in the conditions of rapid changes in the global energy market. The study of the geographical affiliation of the authors of scientific works in this area showed that scientists from China, the USA, Great Britain, Germany, India, Canada, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, and Spain published the most significant number of publications. The share of publications by geographical affiliation to these countries is 75%. At the same time, the number of publications in the Scopus database published by domestic authors is relatively small, which once again confirmed the lack of research and timeliness of the study carried out in Ukraine.