event 12 déc. 2022

Online Journal // Energy Nexus: Water, Food and Power

The Energy Nexus: Water, Food, and Power journal focuses its attention on the interrelationships between water, food and power. Its main purpose is to develop adequate methodologies of analysis and tools to describe resources availability, use, and recyclability. It provides an open access source of information for all kinds of readership and a highly visible place of discussion for the scientific community.

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The following entry was written by the editors of the Energy Nexus: Water, Food, and Power journal in December 2022.

Presenting a new journal — Energy Nexus: Water, Food, and Power

As the world population, and industrial production increase, so too does the use of finite resources. Water, food and power, both energy and societal, come together at a nexus of sustainability. The nexus is the heart of these intertwined and often competing tensions. As pressure on these limited resources grows, new and increasingly complex questions and problems emerge.

As the editors of this new journal, we believe a standard methodology is needed, which should be based on the detailed analysis of the interrelationships between those resources and the Nexus, which links them all. Therefore, scientific methods have to be developed, together with adequate policies and governance. This is a key issue for peaceful and long-lasting societal development.

The main purpose of the journal Energy Nexus: Water, Food, and Power is to develop adequate methodologies of analysis and tools to describe resources availability, use, and recyclability. The journal focuses its attention on the interrelationships between water, food and power, where “power” signifies a strong link with the energy sector.

The field is an emerging one — particular care must be put in communicating the latest results and in finding common and standardized tools to address the topic of the Nexus. The journal will provide an open access source of information for all kinds of readership and a highly visible place of discussion for the scientific community. We hope that the ideas, problems, and solutions that will be discussed will inspire stakeholders and policymakers at national and international levels.

The journal is organized into four main areas: energy, water, food and modelling (where modeling includes also optimization). The energy area will take into consideration cross-sectional issues, such as: water and soil use in bioenergy; water use in power plants and hydropower; water use in fracturing, hydrogen energy, carbon capture and storage; energy materials recycling; and carbon footprint of energy conversion technologies. The water area will deal with wastewaters treatment and water recycle, resource recovery, desalination, hydrology and the water footprint of energy and food production chains.

The food area will focus attention on the reduction of water and energy use in agriculture and the food industry (agro-food processing), through optimal cultivation and irrigation practices, but also through genetic improvement of crops; synthetic biology; the production of food and chemicals with algae; urban agriculture; sustainable soil and nutrients management, to protect biodiversity, integrated solutions (e.g., sustainable aquaponics). It is recognizing the importance of the modelling activity, based on the recent developments of new technologies, like the integration of web GIS and remote sensing, data science and artificial intelligence, Life Cycle Assessment and Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) models.

Energy Nexus word cloud, using the titles of the first 143 papers published until December 2022.

Find out more about the Energy Nexus and read the full Aims & Scope by visiting elsevier.com/locate/nexus.

Topics covered until December 2022 can be seen in the figure above, which was created using the titles of the 143 papers published in the first 8 volumes.

Key topics, shown by how often a word is repeated, include: energy (50), nexus (48), water (17), waste (13), carbon (11), wastewater (11), impact (9), performance (9), plant (9), system (9), water-energy (9), food (8), power (8), sustainable (8), assessment (7), emissions (7), heat (7), and optimization (7).

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