Smart Energy Systems, Infrastructure Financing, and the Wider Economy

The term “smart energy systems” has been defined, used, and searched in the recent decades to define and interpret alternative newly developed solutions and frameworks for an efficient energy transformation by employing renewable energy sources to mitigate the climate change impacts and for achieving sustainable development goals. Regarding Scopus bibliographic database, this searched term has shown its dramatically increase since in the accumulative number of scientific documents within the last decade with the peak of over 67,000 documents found in 2019. The words “smart power grid,” “electric power transmission networks,” and “smart grids” are the most related keywords that have been synonymously used for the term “smart energy systems” focusing mainly on electricity and power energy for describing newly developed alternative solutions to achieve a swift energy transformation procedure. However, this procedure requires a broader consideration and definitions of smart energy systems across several additional related sectors, infrastructure investments, and the wider economy. Motivated by those reasons, this book chapter first revisits the literature for a better understanding and definition of the term “smart energy systems” and elaborates its most related keywords with synonymous use by providing the examples provided by the most recent literature. This book chapter then reproduces summary statistics and investigation on the principal proxies of renewable energy consumption, renewable electricity output, and infrastructure investment trends and needs associated with the development of the real economy through employing a sample of 56 countries, and their effects on mitigating the risk of climate change via reduced carbon emission amount worldwide over the last few decades. Finally, the book chapter concludes the main findings provided by the synthesis of the recent literature, the overview of the development of the wider economy with important policy implications, suggestions, and further research works needed for an efficient sustainable energy transformation of the globe.