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The bioeconomy model provides an alternative view of global economic systems by putting sustainable practices combined with digital approaches at the forefront to tackle issues such as climate change. To address this new business trends, financial institutions began to set up the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) business units to evaluate their business strategies. This paper is aimed at examining the nonfinancial effect created by the digital transformation (DT) activities, highlighting the role of enterprise heterogeneity after the implementation of Environmental Protection Law (EPL) in China. We employ the panel data of A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020, selecting DT and ESG indicators as the important representations of "Industry 5.0." Our empirical results demonstrate a positive impact of EPL on the ESG performance in sight of resource enterprises (REs), environmental enterprises (EEs), and polluting enterprises (PEs), but a negative impact of EPL on the DT indicators among those environmental related industries. Additional causal relationship regression reveals that enterprise DT has an intrinsic promoting effect on the ESG performance, emphasizing on the high risk of digitization process being the shock transmitters to enterprise nonfinancial indices. Notably, the connectedness of environmental policy illustrates dynamic patterns by parallel trend test and propensity score matching (PSM) DID regression. This paper is prone to benefit lawmakers, regulators, and firm executives responsible for analyzing and assessing enterprise digitization behavior by exploring the influence of macrolevel environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Human activities are directly related to fossil fuel consumption and cause global warming and climate change effects by emitting greenhouse gas into the lower atmosphere. To reduce and adapt to such effects, renewable energy sources such as surface dams, including hydroelectric energy (HE) generation units, are gaining importance. In the current literature, HE potential calculations are based on formulations that are quite simple, clear and do not distinguish between different situations. In this paper, two classification methodologies are proposed for better assessment of HE production. The first one is based on the concept of the hypsographic curve to distinguish different drainage basin features into "Young," "Mature" and "Old." The second classification takes into account the newly defined energy index (EI) principle, which helps to classify the HE generation capability of drainage basins into "Very low," "Low," "Normal," "High" and "Very high." The application of the proposed methodology is presented for three drainage basins from the upstream sub‐basins of the Tigris River in Turkey. A comparison of the results shows that the proposed methodologies not only give numerical values but also sets linguistically rational and logical rules for the HE potential of a drainage basin. In the upstream basin of the Tigris River, the EI values vary between 0.705 and 0.122, corresponding to the "High" and "Low" categories, respectively. It is recommended that these two classification procedures be considered before the construction of any dam for HE production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Recently, due to climate change and global warming, carbon free power generation is becoming important. Among various heat sources to replace fossil fuels, a Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) can be a successful alternative power source. The MSR uses liquid nuclear fuel instead of solid fuel which enables to have high power density, compact size, and inherent safety features. The MSR Experiment (MSRE) which was conducted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) had demonstrated these possibilities. However, since the MSRE focused on the nuclear reactor design and operation rather than generating electricity, many issues are still needed to be addressed to fully evaluate potential of an MSR. One of the key issues is to calculate the optimal pinch temperature range of the primary and secondary heat exchangers of the MSR heat transport system. Thus, in this study, to calculate the optimal pinch temperature range of the heat exchangers of the MSR heat transport system, heat transport system, and power conversion system for MSRE are designed conceptually. A Plate Fin type Heat Exchanger (PFHE) is newly suggested and evaluated in this paper for MSR heat transport system application to achieve high compactness and satisfactory performance. Furthermore, to calculate the optimal pinch temperature range from an economic point of view, a PFHE annual cost model is utilized to estimate the cost of PFHE with respect to the pinch temperature. An optimal pinch temperature range is recommended from the study for the early design phase of MSR, which is 5 ~ 15 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate projections under the high-emission representative concentration pathway "RCP-8.5" scenario are used to show the effects of global warming on the energy production of two similar concentrated solar tower power plants in Spain and Chile from 2025 to 2060. Results show a reduction of the annual energy production of almost 1.8% for Chile and an increase of almost 6% in the Spanish plant, but an increase of 10% water consumption due to both the increase in dry- and wet-bulb temperatures and changes in the direct normal irradiation caused by climate change. When the effect of water restrictions is included in the model caused by the foreseen reduction in water availability in Spain, the increase of the annual energy production is only 2%. Finally, the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) calculated during the whole power plant lifetime (35 years) with respect to the LCOE obtained at the beginning of the project is increased by 1.1% in the Chilean plant, whereas in the Spanish plant, it can be reduced more than 2.5% if there are no water restrictions, while a reduction of 0.4% is expected in a scenario with water restrictions. Results show that careful consideration of climate projections should be considered to properly estimate the economic viability of solar tower plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Hydrogen production via water splitting using nuclear electricity is one of the most promising, mature and near‐term deployable low carbon routes to establishing the hydrogen economy in nuclear‐equipped nations. Hydrogen has enormous potential to decarbonize multiple industrial sectors, including the hard‐to‐abate industries, which release significant quantities of greenhouse gases every year. Both nuclear and renewables can be used as energy sources for green hydrogen production, but presently, the focus is on renewables, possibly because of the high upfront capital investment for nuclear power projects and the skewed perception of risk and safety issues surrounding nuclear energy. In this work, the rationale for supporting the deployment and growth of the nuclear‐driven hydrogen supply sector is established from the perspective of the power plant owner and the potential off‐take industries that will require large quantities of low carbon hydrogen for decarbonizing some or all of their operations. The status of the technology alternatives, their techno‐commercial features, the enabling mechanisms for project deployment, and the potential barriers along the way are analysed, and key recommendations for near‐term policy action are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Nuclear power plants provide clean, carbon free, stable, reliable electricity and can offer nonelectric products and services via cogeneration operations to multiple sectors. This contributes to decarbonization of the current energy and industrial systems, supports climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and ensures sustainable development over the long term, according to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) framework and the provisions of the Conference of Parties 21 (COP21) Paris Agreement, 2015. This work surveys the potential role of nuclear cogeneration projects in meeting these objectives based on the current technological landscape. It focuses on nuclear assisted desalination for freshwater production and electrolytic hydrogen production as the use cases and suggests an assessment framework for their holistic evaluation. New integrated metrics and multi‐criteria performance indicators beyond the levelized cost of production are developed to quantify the likely multi‐dimensional impacts of such projects. The use of these for screening alternatives illustrates the fact that depending on weightage given to different criteria, different technologies may appear to be better suited to deployment under given set of conditions. These metrics are expected to be useful for creation of a decision support system for deployment of nuclear cogeneration projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]