14 SCHOLARLY SHOWCASE SCHOLARLY SHOWCASE 13 Gebhardt, Sebastian, Yun Hou, and Masaru Yarime. “Directing environmental innovation toward radical clean technologies for sustainable transitions: Market-based vs. command-and-control policies.” Research Policy 55.4 (2026): 105446. Environmental Policy and Sustainability Focus of Study This study classifies environmental innovation into clean technologies and pollution abatement technologies. Using 1991–2020 patent data of manufacturing firms from 17 EU countries and multiple empirical methods, it compares how market-based and command-and-control (C&C) policies affect corporate environmental innovation. Market-based policies offer long-term incentives, flexibility and market effects to drive radical clean technology development, while rigid C&C rules cannot foster transformative innovation. Empirically, market-based policies greatly promote clean technologies and their technological radicalness, yet C&C policies show no significant effects. The paper addresses the research gap on policy guidance for innovation direction and enriches relevant theories on sustainability transitions. Policy Recommendation Policymakers should take market-based tools like carbon taxes and emission trading as core measures to advance radical clean technologies, with C&C policies serving only as supplements. Stable policy frameworks are required to stabilize market expectations, and more public R&D funding should be provided for high-risk emerging clean technologies. Governments also need to cultivate related niche markets via industrial and infrastructure planning. It is vital to abandon campaign-style regulation, balance regulatory intensity and implementation flexibility, and adopt mixed policy instruments to break the reliance on polluting technologies, so as to realize long-term and systematic sustainability transitions. Yunjiang Yu, Chenwei Fan, Yingying Zhang, Yigang Wei, Pengyu Zhu, Xuyang Zheng, Jianghui Liu. “From grey to green: The role of emission trading schemes in China’s urban transformation.” Energy Strategy Reviews 64 (2026): 102084. Focus of Study This paper adopts the synthetic control method and DEA model to explore how China’s pilot emission trading schemes (ETS) affect urban green development efficiency from 2003 to 2020. The results show ETS improves urban green efficiency by 10%–15% overall, with obvious regional disparities. Technological innovation and industrial restructuring are two core influencing mechanisms. Multiple robustness tests verify the policy effects. The study also discusses institutional constraints and external shocks impacting policy implementation, filling gaps in evaluating ETS’s comprehensive green benefits and offering empirical support for national carbon market construction. Policy Recommendation China should further expand the coverage and improve operational mechanisms of the national ETS. Governments shall formulate differentiated carbon market rules based on regional resource endowments and industrial features. It is vital to boost financial participation and innovate carbon financial products to optimize resource allocation. Authorities need to continuously incentivize corporate green technological innovation and industrial upgrading. Besides, supportive infrastructure for clean energy should be perfected, and rigid institutional barriers in key sectors should be removed, to fully unleash ETS’s potential in advancing low-carbon and sustainable urban transformation. Soares, Ian V., Anna Furberg, Shoaib Azizi, Göran Finnveden, Masaru Yarime, and Magdalena M. Klemun. “Estimating Cross-Border Cloud Computing Emissions: A Consumption-Based Approach Applied to Major European Data Center Hubs.” iScience (United States) 29, no. 6 (June 2026): 116061. Focus of Study This 2026 study establishes a consumption-based accounting method to measure cross-border cloud emissions, fixing limitations of traditional location- based accounting that attribute all data center pollution to host countries instead of end consumers. It targets three major EU cloud hubs—Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands—covering 2017–2022, classifying cloud traffic into domestic, export and import flows. Analysis reveals distinct national profiles: Germany’s 75% domestic cloud usage, Ireland’s 85% export-oriented hyperscale infrastructure, and the Netherlands’ balanced cross-border data exchange. The paper quantifies electricity and carbon intensity gaps across nations, assesses energy efficiency improvements, and conducts regional sensitivity tests to prove that relocating cloud workloads alters total emissions, filling the research gap of unquantified transboundary digital carbon flows. Policy Recommendation The paper suggests complementary policies alongside existing territorial emission rules rather than replacing them. Host nations should enforce strict licensing rules for data centers above 50MW peak capacity, obligating operators to fund grid construction and renewable energy projects to offset local infrastructure costs. Governments need to incorporate consumption-based metrics into energy planning to avoid inaccurate demand projections, especially for import-reliant Germany. Cross-border cooperation is vital to leverage low-carbon grid arbitrage: hosting cloud services in EU low-carbon areas cuts total emissions by 4%, while fossil-heavy regions push emissions up by 8–12%. Authorities should also push hyperscale cloud firms to disclose customer geographic data to build fair climate responsibility-sharing mechanisms between hosting and consuming countries.
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