The oil and gas industries remain an important drive for the world economy. On one hand, global demand for fossil fuels is still rising, and on the other hand, companies face complex investment challenges due to the harsh operational environment of exploration and production activities. Workforce regulations aim to provide a safe and secured working environment. However, exploration and production activities still cause local and global environmental risks such as groundwater contamination, or climate change in broader scale. Analyzing and reporting mechanisms are key performance indicators of sustainable development at the level of oil and gas companies. Obtaining and analyzing required data, nevertheless, seem to be a persistent challenge as to what degree these findings can affect the routine and strategic decisions of the oil and gas companies. In order to enable oil and gas companies to measure and control risks and manage incidents, artificial intelligent technologies in extended monitoring and supervising E&P operations is known to be an efficient prevention strategy. Such tools not only aid in profitability of the oil and gas companies, but also increase awareness of environment and climate change to act more responsibly. In this study, the significances of environmental policies were investigated through interviews with executives and stakeholders, revealing that the implementation of environmental protection policies is affected by the financial stability of the companies, and under severe economic situations, companies seem less enthusiastic in strictly implementing those policies. This paper provides a comprehensive review of emerging technologies in addressing existing and foreseen challenges in sustainable development in oil and gas industries, with the aim of suggesting prime solutions for strategic planning attempts.

In the context of the European Union promoting clean energy, sustainability and better living conditions for its citizens, the development of smarts cities is an initiative supported at the European Union level, in line with the new energy policies of the European Union promoted by the package “Clean Energy for All Europeans”. The concept of smart cities gains increasing importance in the European Union, a fact that is reflected in the project “European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities” of the European Commission. Smart cities are a practical example of how the new energy policies shape the lives of the European Union citizens, trying to improve it. As a consequence, new business models arise in big cities, involving the use of technology for better living conditions. These new, technology-based business models are important, as they improve the life quality of the inhabitants, they reduce the climate change impact, and they contribute as well to job creation in the IT-industry, promoting innovation. They have as well a social impact, as they bring experts from energy policies, business, economics, legal and IT together in order to project a new type of city—the smart city. The research hypothesis of the present article is that there is a high acceptance towards the concept of smart cities at the European Union level and that this concept could be implemented with the help of information technology and of artificial intelligence. This way, legal provisions, economic measures and IT-tools work together in order to create synergy effects for better life quality of the citizens of the European Union. The research hypothesis is analyzed by means of the questionnaire as a qualitative research method and is as well assessed by using case studies (e.g., Austria, Finland, Romania). The novelty of the case studies is that the development of smart cities is analyzed due to the new trend towards sustainability in two countries with different living conditions in the European Union.

Demand response plays a very important role in balancing the intermittent production of an increasing share of renewable energy sources on the energy market. This article analyses the importance of demand response and the role of aggregators for the new development of the electricity market, where the renewables will play a more important role. The main objective of this research is to determine the acceptance level of demand response and its implementation on the energy consumer side. This acceptance should include a professional actor, the aggregator which is assuming the role of optimizing the relation between energy producers and consumers, and to monitor the implementation and use of demand response. The research is based on semi-structured interviews with experts in energy from Hungary, Romania and Serbia, on workshops with experts and a wider online survey with end customers for electricity. The results indicate that there is a willingness potential to implement demand response programs with aggregators as intermediaries between energy providers and end consumers of electrical energy.

Consumer behaviour in the energy field is playing a more important role in the new approach dominated by the proliferation of renewable energy sources. In this new context, the grid has to balance the intermittent and uncertain renewable energy generated, and find solutions, also, on the consumer side for increasing the stability and reliability of the energy system. The main de-mand response solutions are price and incentive based, but there is a need to identify the main factors which can influence their efficiency due to the fact that there is a lack of knowledge about the preferences of consumers. The main goal of this article is to identify the main demand response solutions and the related key factors which influence the participation of consumers in demand response programs and may contribute to the spread of renewable energy sources. For this research, semi-structured interviews were organised with experts in energy from Romania, Hungary and Serbia, as well as workshops with experts in energy, and an online survey with customers for electricity. This article reduces the gap between the results of technical studies, related in demand response programs, and their practical implementations, where the consumer behaviour and its social dimensions are neglected even though, in reality, they are playing the main role. The results suggest that the consumer’s participation in demand response programs is highly influenced by different aspects related to the promotion of the renewable energy and the reduction of CO₂ emissions and the global warming impact.

The purchase of an electric vehicle has become a widely debated topic by the economic community in recent years. However, few personal automobile users, who purchased new cars, have chosen a fully electric vehicle. The novelty of this research came from the assumption that there is a lack of knowledge in this field and fuelled by contradicting information. Potential electric vehicle buyers have developed a real psychosis on the subject, the most consistent motives being among others the charge anxiety. Many researchers consider that the worries of the vehicle users are exaggerated and are not based on reality. Better documentation of the subject would reduce these fears and would increase the process of electrical vehicles absorption. The main objective of this article is to analyse the main anxiety factors by buying an electric vehicle and to reduce the related anxiety. For this purpose, the authors have performed an econometric analysis based on a questionnaire distributed online and face to face in Romania.

This paper redefines hydrogen colour codes based on carbon dioxide emissions. It highlights that there are several colour codes, which disregard the carbon dioxide emitted in the hydrogen production process (e.g., electrolysis with renewable energy, steam reforming of natural gas, coal gasification, etc.). Some colours are used interchangeably for different technologies, while many colour codes do not assign a colour for all possible production pathways. Therefore, the existent framework is misleading and lacks scientific underpinning of colour labelling (e.g., green, blue, grey, black, yellow, purple, turquoise, etc.). This paper builds upon the work of Nikolaidis and Poullikkas and provides a qualitative assessment of the colour codes used to label various technologies. Based on a comparative analysis of the latest research and analysing hydrogen colour codes, this paper inquires whether there is or not, a common understanding of the hydrogen production pathways that lie behind each hydrogen “colour”. This paper finds that there are major inconsistencies regarding the colours used, especially for technologies using fossil fuels as an energy source, but nuclear energy has also been found to have discrepancies in labelling. At the same time, there is only one colour used to describe a wide range of technologies using renewable energy (i.e., green). However, if carbon dioxide emissions of the corresponding production technology were visually represented using a predefined colour-code, the hydrogen produced with fossil fuels would have a less diverse colour range, than current colour palettes would suggest. Rather than being “grey” and “blue”, coal, oil and gasbased hydrogen appear to be different shades of “brown” and “black”. This finding illustrates that these technologies emit more carbon dioxide emissions than an initial labelling would suggest, which raises the question whether any colours of hydrogen, other than its “green” versions, is compliant with the objectives of the Paris Agreement.