Energy Sector’s Green Transformation towards Sustainable Development: A Review and Future Directions

Abstract

The energy sector’s green transformation recently gained major scientific attention, due to the role of the energy sector in the economy. The energy sector, similarly to the other economic sectors, faces sustainable development (SD) challenges. This review paper’s goal is to explore the areas of the green energy sector transformation towards SD context distinguished in the scientific literature review. The adopted method in this paper is bibliometric research of the scientific publications indexed in Scopus. There were two original queries formulated, and their results were analyzed in the VOSviewer program in the form of bibliometric maps and tables. A comparison of the proposed original queries’ results points to the importance of the journal subject area indexed in the Scopus database. There are publications important for the energy sector green transformation not included in the energy subject area in this database. The vast number of publications dealing with cross-disciplinary subjects revolving around green transformation in the energy sector is the cause of the multiple side topics covering the areas of the SD. The study identifies keyword-specified areas around the topic of green transformation towards SD in the energy sector. In this study, the limitations of the employed methods and the theoretical, methodical, and empirical implications of the research were presented. Presented results can inspire other researchers who are looking for a research gap or describing the state of the art. The future possible research avenues were also addressed.