Landscape of scientific research on the problems of decarbonization and achieving carbon neutrality of national economies

Abstract

Purpose: is to form a comprehensive understanding of the patterns of publication activity in the field of decarbonization that have developed in the global and Russian scientific space, in order to identify promising scientific areas on this basis that can define new research horizons in achieving carbon neutrality.Methods: the research methods involved bibliographic and bibliometric analyses of scholarly publications, utilizing data from the Scopus and eLibrary databases. The study encompasses the timeframe from 2012 to 2022. The research methodology is structured to address three key objectives. Firstly, it aims to identify the quantitative dynamics of global publication activity in the realm of decarbonization. Secondly, the investigation seeks to analyze publication patterns at the levels of research organizations, countries, keywords, related topics, scientific publications, subject areas, and thematic groups, including clusters of thematic groups. Thirdly, the research involves semantic analysis of publications and the identification of points of research interest within the contexts of both global and Russian scientific landscapes.Results: it has been established that bibliographic clustering of studies on decarbonization problems occurs not so much around technical and technological solutions, but in conceptually broader coordinates. It has been identified that the aspiration for carbon neutrality is predominantly observed in economies characterized by a high standard of living, where citizens exhibit a heightened sense of social responsibility and a greater commitment to enhancing the quality of life for future generations. It was revealed that if the global problems of decarbonization are the center of gravity of the most powerful researchers and scientific teams, but in Russia this topic is not yet characterized by a comparable positioning.Conclusions and Relevance: systematization of decarbonization research, which is rapidly developing both in terms of volume indicators and in terms of increasing its interdisciplinarity and social relevance, is the most important condition for effective scientific orientation and research routing in a highly fragmented and contradictory development space on the problems of the global energy transition.