Transdisciplinary researchers collaborate with diverse partners outside of academia to tackle sustainability problems. The patterns and practices of social interaction and the contextual nature of transdisciplinary research result in different performance expectations than traditional, curiosity-driven research. Documenting patterns of interaction can inform project success and affirm progress toward interim outcomes on the way to achieve sustainability impacts. Yet providing credible and robust indicators of research activity remains challenging. We provide quantitative and qualitative indicators for assessing transdisciplinary practices and patterns through social network analysis (SNA). Our assessment developed four criteria to reveal how SNA metrics provide insight into (1) diversity of participants; (2) whether and how integration and collaboration are occurring, (3) the relative degrees of network stability and fragility, and (4) how the network is structured to achieve its goals. These four key criteria can be used to help identify patterns of research activity and determine whether interim progress is occurring.

This paper examines the literature on the Sustainability in the Arctic region, using a bibliometric analysis of 213 English-language articles published between 1980 and 2022 exploiting Bibliometrix, an R package. To find relevant literature using the Web of Science (WOS) database, we searched for documents using mesh terms based on the query of two terms, “Arctic & Sustainability”. We used the Boolean operator “AND” to combine the two terms and the Boolean operator “OR” to include synonyms of the terms. The articles retrieved were authored by 724 researchers, published in 98 journals, representing 132 countries, and growing at 5.08% annually. The findings reveal that a substantial portion of the Arctic sustainability literature placed significant emphasis on the examination of climate change, adaptation, and vulnerabilities affecting local communities. Furthermore, the more recent publications in this field concentrate predominantly on exploring perceptions and governance.

Bioenergy represents a viable renewable alternative for the many off-grid remote communities in Northern Canada that rely on diesel-based energy infrastructure. Despite the abundance of forest-based biomass, bioenergy for heat and power in Canada is used primarily in industrial contexts. Community-scale bioenergy, although growing, has been limited. Supply chain challenges, institutional and policy arrangements, and community perspectives indicate a need to better understand the ‘business ecosystem’ for bioenergy in Canada. The ecosystem includes technologies, community contexts, suppliers, developers, and policy makers. In this study, we explore the bioenergy business ecosystem challenges and perspectives from supply-side stakeholders. Interviews were conducted with representatives from the government, industry, and community—all working in bioenergy. The results indicate the following challenges facing the bioenergy ecosystem, with respect to community energy security: lack of cross-jurisdictional consistency in legislation and policies across Canada, structural issues such as subsidized energy and utility ownership, and misdirected support for local capacity building in the bioenergy sector. We also find that the existing support systems are prone to misuse, pointing to efficiency gaps in investment flows. The insights that emerge from this work, especially from industry stakeholders, are meaningful for communities and policy makers alike.

Community-led bioenergy projects show great promise to address a range of issues for remote and Indigenous Arctic communities that typically rely on diesel for meeting their energy demands. However, there is very little research devoted to better understanding what makes individual projects successful. In this study, we analyze the case of the Galena Bioenergy Project (Alaska)—a biomass heating project that uses locally sourced woody biomass to help meet the heating demands of a large educational campus. Using project documents and other publicly available reports, we evaluate the project’s success using three indicators: operational, environmental, and community level socio-economic benefits. We find that the project shows signs of success in all three respects. It has a reliable fuel supply chain for operations, makes contributions towards greenhouse gas reductions by replacing diesel and has improved energy and economic security for the community. We also examine enabling factors behind the project’s success and identify the following factors as crucial: community-level input and support, state level financial support, access to forest biomass with no competing use, predictable demand and committed leadership. Our findings have important implications for other remote communities across the Boreal zone—especially those with nearby forest resources. Our examination of this case study ultimately highlights potential pathways for long-term success and, more specifically, shows how biomass resources might be best utilized through community-led initiatives to sustainably support energy security in Arctic communities.