The rapid development of the digital economy including through artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and blockchain can greatly reduce the overall energy emissions. However, digital economy-based net-zero energy systems entail trade-offs across economic, environmental, and social dimensions. As such, innovative solutions will be identified to establish affordable net-zero systems, including the relevant infrastructure and facilities such as big data centres, that can be implemented in developing countries.

Agriculture is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and especially of methane that stem from livestock farming and nitric oxide that result from fertilizers. Accordingly, the global climate’s deterioration brings great pressure to the global agricultural production; it is therefore of utmost importance to achieve low-carbon or even zero-carbon transformation in agriculture while maintaining or improving productivity; solutions are thus searched to reduce emissions including through synthetic fertilizers, crops cultivation, ruminant farming, efficient land utilization, increasing the output per unit area, innovative green food, etc.

During the pandemic, the worldwide prevention and control measures led to an exponential demand for medical waste treatment as medical and biological wastes are considered especially hazardous; they could directly or indirectly cause great environmental pollution. Traditionally, medical and biological waste is mainly incinerated at a high temperature; however, and since hydrocarbon organic compounds are the main components of medical and biological waste that emit massive amounts of CO2 and Dioxin, new solutions must be identified to sustainably manage medical and biological waste, including through cutting-edge technological applications such as microwave, steam treatment, dry heat treatment, encapsulation, etc.