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This review gives concise information on green technology (GT) and Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0). Climate change has begun showing its impacts on the environment, and the change is real. The devastating COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected lives and the world from the deadly consequences at a social, economic, and environmental level. In order to balance this crisis, there is a need to transition toward green, sustainable forms of living and practices. We need green innovative technologies (GTI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to develop green, durable, biodegradable, and eco-friendly products for a sustainable future. GTI encompasses all innovations that contribute to developing significant products, services, or processes that lower environmental harm, impact, and worsening while augmenting natural resource utilization. Sensors are typically used in IoT environmental monitoring applications to aid ecological safety by nursing air or water quality, atmospheric or soil conditions, and even monitoring species' movements and habitats. The industries and the governments are working together, have come up with solutions-the Green New Deal, carbon pricing, use of bio-based products as biopesticides, in biopharmaceuticals, green building materials, bio-based membrane filters for removing pollutants, bioenergy, biofuels and are essential for the green recovery of world economies. Environmental biotechnology, Green Chemical Engineering, more bio-based materials to separate pollutants, and product engineering of advanced materials and environmental economies are discussed here to pave the way toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN and achieve the much-needed IR 4.0 for a greener-balanced environment and a sustainable future.

Nanomaterials have gained significant attention as a remarkable class of materials due to their unique properties and the fact that they encompass a wide range of samples with at least one dimension ranging from 1 to 100 nm. The deliberate design of nanoparticles enables the achievement of extremely large surface areas. In the field of cost-effective electrochemical devices for energy storage and conversion applications, nanomaterials have emerged as a key area of research. Their exceptional physical and chemical properties have led to extensive investigations aimed at improving the performance and cost-effectiveness of electrochemical devices, including batteries, supercapacitors, and fuel cells. The continuous development and enhancement of these high-performance materials are driven by the demand for enhanced productivity, connectivity, and sustainability at a reduced cost. This review focuses on the electrochemical performance of electrodes, energy storage, and electrochemical sensors (ES) based on nanotechnology. It discusses the application of nanotechnology in electrochemistry for water purification and the fate of substances in water, while also introducing green nanotechnology and cost-effective, high-fidelity product creation through electrochemical methods. The study emphasizes the synthesis of novel nanomaterials, such as metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), and MXenes, with applications in electrochemical devices. Furthermore, it explores the integration of nanostructures with electrochemical systems in economically significant and future applications, along with the challenges faced by nanotechnology-based industries. The paper also explores the interplay between nanomaterials and biosensors, which play a vital role in electrochemical devices. Overall, this review provides a comprehensive overview of the significance of nanomaterials in the development of cost-effective electrochemical devices for energy storage and conversion. It highlights the need for further research in this rapidly evolving field and serves as a valuable resource for researchers and engineers interested in the latest advancements in nanomaterials for electrochemical devices.

Green development and the digital economy are receiving increasing attention among scholars, practitioners, and policy makers, as the link between the two remains unclear, and exploring the study of the mechanisms at play between the two to achieve quality economic development is an urgent issue to be addressed. This study addresses this gap and aims to provide clarity by analyzing examples of business practices in developing countries. Using a total of 20,283 datasets from 2049 listed manufacturing firms from China from 2007 to 2020 as the study sample, the mechanism of digital transformation’s impact on firms’ green technological innovation capability is empirically examined and the mediating role of firms’ green dynamic capabilities is verified. This study finds that: (1) Digital transformation significantly enhances the level of green technology innovation of enterprises. (2) There is a partial mediating effect of green dynamic capabilities in the process of digital transformation positively affecting enterprises’ green technology innovation. (3) Digital transformation by state-owned, central and western regions and by medium-sized enterprises is more significantly effective in promoting green technology innovation than non-state-owned, eastern regions and small and large enterprises. (4) The analysis of economic consequences shows that digital transformation can mitigate the incremental costs incurred in the process of digital transformation by empowering enterprises to achieve green development and cost reduction through green technology innovation.

In the era of the digital economy, digital technology brings new opportunities for enterprises’ development. The degree of enterprises’ digital transformation determines their development level and potential. At present, China’s “double carbon” policy is having a profound impact on the industry. The relationship between digital transformation strategy and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance is analyzed based on the digitalization and sustainable development goals of enterprises, and on the basis of positioning enterprise digital transformation level through the strategic alignment model (SAM). Data are collected by questionnaire survey from 224 large manufacturing enterprises in China as a sample for empirical testing by the hierarchical regression method. The empirical results show the following. (1) Digital transformation strategy has a direct positive and significant impact on enterprise ESG performance. Specifically, it is reflected in the two dimensions of digital transformation strategy, namely business digitalization and platform digitalization, which have a significant direct positive impact on enterprise ESG performance. (2) Enterprise green innovation plays a significant intermediate role in promoting the relationship between digital transformation strategy and enterprise ESG performance. (3) The two dimensions of green innovation, namely green process innovation and green product innovation, both play a partial mediating role in promoting business digitalization and platform digitalization development level to enterprise ESG performance, respectively. It can be concluded that business digitalization and platform digitalization can improve enterprise ESG performance by promoting green process innovation and green product innovation. Therefore, enterprises should clarify the direction of development of their digital transformation strategy, emphasize green innovation, and continuously improve their ESG performance to create favorable conditions for achieving sustainable development.

This paper studies government subsidies for green technology adoption while considering the manufacturing industry’s response. Government subsidies offered directly to consumers impact the supplier’s production and pricing decisions. Our analysis expands the current understanding of the price-setting newsvendor model, incorporating the external influence from the government, who is now an additional player in the system. We quantify how demand uncertainty impacts the various players (government, industry, and consumers) when designing policies. We further show that, for convex demand functions, an increase in demand uncertainty leads to higher production quantities and lower prices, resulting in lower profits for the supplier. With this in mind, one could expect consumer surplus to increase with uncertainty. In fact, we show that this is not always the case and that the uncertainty impact on consumer surplus depends on the trade-off between lower prices and the possibility of underserving customers with high valuations. We also show that when policy makers such as governments ignore demand uncertainty when designing consumer subsidies, they can significantly miss the desired adoption target level. From a coordination perspective, we demonstrate that the decentralized decisions are also optimal for a central planner managing jointly the supplier and the government. As a result, subsidies provide a coordination mechanism. This paper was accepted by Yossi Aviv, operations management .

The development of green products in manufacturing enterprises is challenged by limited independent innovation capabilities and insufficient green technology. Based on knowledge-based theory, this study investigates the influence of boundary-spanning green technology search (BGTS) and technology integration capability (TIC) on green product development performance (GPDP). Using polynomial regression analysis with response surface methodology (PRA with RSM) on data from 341 companies, the following findings were obtained: (1) Higher levels of BGTS and TIC congruence are associated with higher GPDP compared to lower levels of congruence. (2) The degree of discrepancy between the BGTS and TIC has an inverted U-shaped relationship with GPDP. (3) GPDP is higher in the “low BGTS–high TIC” combination than in the “high BGTS–low TIC” combination. (4) Green technology innovation capability mediates the relationship between BGTS-TIC congruence and GPDP. (5) Strategic foresight positively moderates the relationship between the BGTS-TIC congruence and green technology innovation capability. These findings enrich the research content of organizational search theory, deepen the research of green technology innovation, expand research on the development of green products, and provide a decision-making reference for manufacturing enterprises’ green transition practices.

Sustainable development of a company is an important task in corporate management. Enterprises must constantly innovate and change to achieve sustainable development. In China, considering the need for sustainable development of enterprises and the requirement of the dual carbon goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, the environment, social responsibility, and governance (ESG) management and green technology innovation of enterprises are in the spotlight. Therefore, this study aimed to use empirical analysis to verify whether the ESG performance of enterprises promotes corporate green technology innovation and to further explore corporate attributes that promote the relationship between the two. This study selected 933 Chinese A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2019 as the research object and used the fixed effect model to empirically analyze the relationship between ESG performance and the green technology innovation capability of enterprises. The results show that ESG performance plays an important role in promoting green technology innovation capability. Moreover, this study found that, compared to enterprises with low technology levels or short-listing life span, the ESG performance of enterprises with high technology level and long listing life span has a stronger role in promoting the green technology innovation capability of enterprises. Simultaneously, compared with non-state-owned enterprises, state-owned enterprises play a stronger role in the promotion. This study enriches the theoretical mechanism of ESG performance affecting green technology innovation of enterprises, and they have a certain reference value for promoting the sustainable development of enterprises.

The agricultural sector is currently facing many global challenges, such as climate change, and environmental problems such as the release of pesticides and fertilizers, which will be exacerbated in the face of population growth and food shortages. Therefore, the need to change traditional farming methods and replace them with new technologies is essential, and the application of nanotechnology, especially green technology offers considerable promise in alleviating these problems. Nanotechnology has led to changes and advances in many technologies and has the potential to transform various fields of the agricultural sector, including biosensors, pesticides, fertilizers, food packaging and other areas of the agricultural industry. Due to their unique properties, nanomaterials are considered as suitable carriers for stabilizing fertilizers and pesticides, as well as facilitating controlled nutrient transfer and increasing crop protection. The production of nanoparticles by physical and chemical methods requires the use of hazardous materials, advanced equipment, and has a negative impact on the environment. Thus, over the last decade, research activities in the context of nanotechnology have shifted towards environmentally friendly and economically viable ‘green’ synthesis to support the increasing use of nanoparticles in various industries. Green synthesis, as part of bio-inspired protocols, provides reliable and sustainable methods for the biosynthesis of nanoparticles by a wide range of microorganisms rather than current synthetic processes. Therefore, this field is developing rapidly and new methods in this field are constantly being invented to improve the properties of nanoparticles. In this review, we consider the latest advances and innovations in the production of metal nanoparticles using green synthesis by different groups of microorganisms and the application of these nanoparticles in various agricultural sectors to achieve food security, improve crop production and reduce the use of pesticides. In addition, the mechanism of synthesis of metal nanoparticles by different microorganisms and their advantages and disadvantages compared to other common methods are presented.

Green technology innovation is crucial for achieving sustainable development. This paper establishes fixed effect and mediation effect models to study how digital finance influences corporate green technology innovation and the moderating role of financial constraints using the data of Chinese A-share public businesses from 2011 to 2020. The results show that, first, green technology innovation is facilitated by digital finance, and both the coverage breadth and use depth play important roles. Second, digital finance encourages business innovation in green technology by alleviating financial constraints. Third, in state-owned businesses and businesses located in the eastern regions, digital finance has a more visible driving impact on green technology innovation. The aforementioned findings offer insightful research to encourage the balanced growth of digital finance and better enable corporate green technology innovation.

This research aims to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR), firm environmental performance (FEP), and firm financial performance (FFP), as well as how green technology innovation performs a mediating role in this relationship. The manufacturing firms listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchanges were selected as the representative sample for the study, and data were gathered from 470 managers and directors of manufacturing firms using a simple random sampling technique. The response rate was 87%. For hypothesis testing, PLS-SEM was used. In addition, green technology innovation is a positive and significant mediator between corporate social responsibility and firm financial and environmental performance. This research provides useful implications for manufacturing firms’ managers, directors, and policymakers to improve corporate social responsibility (CSR) and green technology innovation in measuring the firm’s financial and environmental performance. The results also have several practical implications that may benefit the management of firms. They urge all of the organization’s stakeholders to consider investing in organizational social behavior and green innovation to enhance the manufacturing firms’ overall performance.