Considerations on Renewable and Sustainable Energy in the Context of the Energy Transition: What is New?

Topics related to renewable and sustainable energy have been addressed by several scientific studies over the last few decades. Nonetheless, it is important to highlight what has already been done by the scientific community and what remains to be done in these fields to provide more insights for stakeholders, including policymakers, researchers, and economic operators. The literature survey showed that there are still gaps to be considered in the literature and novelties to be brought through different approaches, particularly those that take into account the several dimensions of these issues. From this perspective, this research aims to present the dimensions of renewable and sustainable energy explored in scientific documents, benchmarking past and future pathways in these domains. To achieve these objectives, a bibliometric analysis (focusing on scientific maturity) was carried out separately across different dimensions associated with this topic (this is one of the novelties of this study). Additionally, a targeted literature analysis based on bibliometric analysis was done, considering the most relevant documents. This research adopts a broad perspective in order to capture the context of energy transition, clean energy, and low-carbon development. The findings obtained show that the subject of renewable and sustainable energy has several topics and subtopics with different dynamics. Within these subtopics, it is worth mentioning the following: solar and wind energy are almost in the saturation phase (85.1% of potential development has already occurred); bioenergy, biomass, and hydroelectric power are at the beginning of the maturity phase (59.7% progress to saturation); tidal and wave energy are in the middle of the maturity phase (71.5% progress to saturation); green hydrogen and clean energy are in the saturation phase (99.0%); renewable energy and sustainable development goals are in the saturation phase (99.0%), and energy policy and technological innovation in renewable energy are in the middle of the maturity phase 68.0%). These results reflect the overlap between different topics rather than the individual scope of each field of research.