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The purpose of this study was to find out the current situation in sustainable alternatives energy sources in cruise business and to propose which role a marine cluster company can play in the climate-challenged future. The thesis looks into the marine cluster business on a sector level, and there is no specific case company in this work. The analysis starts with the case studies in the marine cluster business. First, it overviews what existing methods are in use for generating energy in different forms for cruise ships when the ship is visiting at ports. Second, it looks into the existing alternative energy generation methods, and third, into the cases where the created customer value can potentially (in the future) turn into a new development project for a marine cluster company. After the current state analysis, the thesis studies existing knowledge to understand the current state of sustainable alternatives for generating electricity and energy in different forms for cruise ships when the ship is visiting at ports. It requires to create a view what existing methods are in use, and how to improve these methods in energy generation economically and environmentally. In addition to that not forgetting the perspectives of investors, business developers, portfolio managers, technology managers and start-up’s role which constantly consider different strategies and new business cases daily during these times of rapid change. For this part, the thesis used literature, articles, research, and previous studies and also published know-how from different marine cluster companies. The outcome of this thesis were the Customer Value Proposition (CVP) and conclusions to help understand the business opportunities in cruise and port business from the energy economy as well as environmentally wise perspectives, and suggestions about the role that marine cluster companies could play in this business. The conclusions also include a little look to the issue from the economic perspective and also a feasibility perspective. Thus, the proposal points to the opportunities to deliver sustainable energy to cruise ships in today’s markets, which can create different scenarios for future alternative technologies, product and services. Due the COVID-19 pandemic and impact to marine cluster industry at spring 2020 which caused wide joint negotiations in Finland, this thesis has also changed its direction, thus the confidential data and original case company is not mentioned or included in this thesis. The thesis subject was modified to create a general CVP without a specific case company.

Ihmisten arkinen liikkuminen paikasta toiseen on tärkeä palanen laajemmassa kestävyysmurroksessa. Liikenne muodostaa Suomessa 20 % kansallisista kasvihuonekaasupäästöistä ja vaikka päästöt ovat tasaisesti vähentyneet, nykyinen tahti ei ole riittävä tämänhetkisten päästövähennystavoitteiden saavuttamiseksi. Kotitalouksien kulutuksen aiheuttamista kasvihuonekaasupäästöistä liikkuminen on suurin yksittäinen päästöjen aiheuttaja. Aikaisempi tutkimus on keskittynyt suurelta osin teknologisiin ratkaisuihin ja yksilöiden valintoihin syinä ja ratkaisuina kestävään liikkumiseen. Näitä lähestymistapoja on kritisoitu siitä, että ne eivät anna riittävää painoarvoa sosiaalisille tekijöille. Käytäntöteorioita on esitetty vaihtoehtona ja vallitsevien yksilökeskeisten lähestymistapojen haastajana arkisen liikkumisen ymmärtämiseen. Käytännöt ovat rutiininomaisia ihmisten käyttäytymismalleja, jotka koostuvat useista elementeistä: materiaaleista, merkityksistä ja kompetensseista. Tämä tutkielma analysoi ihmisten liikkumista ennen COVID-19-pandemiaa ja sen aikana käytäntöteoreettisesta näkökulmasta. Tavoite on selvittää mitä käytäntöteorioiden avulla voidaan oppia kestävästä liikkumisesta, sekä miten pandemia on vaikuttanut ihmisten liikkumiseen Suomessa. Tutkielmaa varten tehtiin yhdeksän puolistrukturoitua haastattelua, joissa osallistujilta kysyttiin heidän liikkumisestaan ennen pandemiaa ja sen aikana. Tulokset muodostavat kokonaisvaltaisen kuvan osallistujien elämästä liikkumisen näkökulmasta. Tulokset analysoitiin käyttäen kvalitatiivista teorialähtöistä sisällönanalyysia. Tuloksista selvisi, että ihmisten liikkuminen muodostaa monimutkaisen systeemin, johon pandemia vaikutti merkittävästi. Tutkimuksessa tunnistettiin lukuisia elementtejä, jotka joko mahdollistivat tai hankaloittivat eri liikkumismuotojen käyttöä. Käytäntöteorioita on usein käytetty tarkastelemaan yhtä liikkumismuotoa kerrallaan, ja tämän tutkielman laajempaa näkökulmaa voidaan pitää yhtenä sen tärkeimmistä ansioista liikkumisen tutkimukseen. Vaikka tutkielma ei tarjoa valmiita vastauksia siihen, miten ihmisten liikkumisesta saataisiin kestävämpää, se tarjoaa tärkeää uutta tietoa käytäntöteoreettiseen liikkumisen tutkimukseen, joka on Suomessa ollut todella vähäistä. Mobility, the somewhat regular and recurring physical movement of people from place to place, is a very important part of a broader transition to sustainability. In Finland the transport sector accounts for 20 % of total greenhouse gas emissions and while emissions have been steadily declining, the pace is not sufficient to meet current emission cut targets. When looking at household generated greenhouse gas emissions, mobility is the single largest contributor. Previous research has focused a lot on technological advancements and individuals’ choices as causes and solutions to sustainable mobility. These approaches have been criticized for underemphasizing the importance of social conditions. Practice theories have been presented as an alternative way of understanding mobility behaviors, challenging the mainstream individualistic explanations. Practices are routinized human behaviors that are made of several elements of materials, meanings, and competences. This thesis adopts a practice theoretical view in analyzing people’s mobility before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to learn what practice theory can teach us about sustainable mobility, and how the pandemic has affected people’s mobility in Finland. Nine semi-structured interviews were conducted, asking the participants about their mobility practices before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, forming a comprehensive picture of their daily lives from a mobility point of view. The results were analyzed using qualitative theory-based content analysis. The results indicated that people’s mobility is a complex system which was largely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Various elements either enabling or hindering the use of different transport modes were identified, as were important connections between different mobility practices. Practice theory has been often used to research one mobility practice at a time and the broader look of this study, focusing on multiple mobility practices, is potentially the most important contribution this thesis makes to previous mobility research. While not providing direct answers to how people’s mobility could be made more sustainable, this thesis makes an important contribution to practice theoretical mobility research which in a Finnish context is very scarce.

One of the ways California is addressing issues of mass incarceration and prison over- crowding in the state is through recent reinvestment in education for justice involved students. Using sustainable development (Bruntland and Khalid, 1987) as a guiding framework, this dissertation examines California’s Corrections to Education pipeline. In particular, I explore the potential of the state’s community college system—the largest in the nation with 116 campuses—to help reduce recidivism by being a critical component in a formerly incarcerated student’s reintegration journey. I report on the results of a content analysis I conducted on what programs are available across all 116 campuses, in order to understand how many programs exist, where they exist, and what they look like along the program development spectrum. Informed by the results from the content analysis, I present a portraiture study of a southern California community college to tell the story of how this particular community has been serving these vulnerable students, some of the challenges formerly incarcerated students face, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The need for sustainable program development, policy implications, and future directions for research are discussed.

We live in a world where 844 million people lack basic drinking water services, and more than four billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation. Somehow, these people go missing in the process of water and sanitation provision. Reaching these billions requires not only technological innovation but also socio-political ingenuity. This dissertation provides theoretical and on-the-ground insight into key social and political components of technological interventions, or what I call the “invisible infrastructure” of tech-led transformations. I focus on infrastructure in low-income regions and explore how social systems relate to technological systems, particularly in terms of street-level bureaucracy, interdisciplinary research, and pro-poor policy implementation. I employ mixed-methods research approaches, producing social science and spatial datasets as well as rich ethnographic observations and archival work. I conduct analyses through both quantitative and qualitative coding, drawing from and contributing to the scholarship of development studies and practice, city and regional planning, and development engineering—all with the practical hope of one day achieving water and sanitation for all.In the Introduction of this dissertation, I propose an invisible infrastructure framework for tech-led transformations in order to help render missing people and social dynamics more visible. I describe how invisible infrastructure is the conceptual arc of my whole endeavor in research to unlock water and sanitation solutions. Each of the following chapters of my dissertation uncovers various aspects of invisible infrastructure (summaries below). The chapters are quite distinct from one another in that they: focus on various regional contexts, draw from various theories and disciplines, and use different data sources and analytical approaches. However, the common goal is the provision of water and sanitation services with an overarching message that certain stakeholders—in particular from marginalized groups—and social dynamics have been rendered invisible. Hence, I consider the chapters as reports of missing persons in innovation and infrastructure to achieve water and sanitation for all. Chapter 1: Significant development funding flows to informational interventions intended to improve public services. Such “transparency fixes” often depend upon the cooperation of frontline workers who produce and disseminate information for citizens. We study frontline worker compliance with a transparency intervention in Bangalore’s water sector, providing one of the first multi-method companions to a field experiment. We examine why workers exhibited modest overall rates of compliance and why compliance varied across neighborhoods. Drawing on ethnographic observation and an original dataset, we find that it is essential to understand how workers prioritize new responsibilities relative to longstanding ones. Perceptions of “core” jobs can be sticky—especially when reaffirmed through interactions with citizens. When family responsibilities take time away from their positions, new tasks are even more neglected. While the street-level bureaucracy and principal agent literatures suggest attributes such as race and education influence compliance, we highlight the importance of financial and familial circumstances. Chapter 2: Sanitation research focuses primarily on containing human waste and preventing disease; thus, it has traditionally been dominated by the fields of environmental engineering and public health. Over the past 20 years, however, the field has grown broader in scope and deeper in complexity, spanning diverse disciplinary perspectives. In this chapter, we review the current literature in the range of disciplines engaged with sanitation research in low- and middle-income countries. We find that perspectives on what sanitation is, and what sanitation policy should prioritize, vary widely. We show how these diverse perspectives augment the conventional sanitation service chain, a framework describing the flow of waste from capture to disposal. We review how these perspectives can inform progress toward equitable sanitation for all (i.e. Sustainable Development Goal 6). Our key message is that both material and nonmaterial flows—and both technological and social functions—make up a sanitation “system.” The components of the sanitation service chain are embedded within the flows of finance, decision making, and labor that make material flows of waste possible. The functions of capture, storage, transport, treatment, reuse, and disposal are interlinked with those of ensuring equity and affordability. We find that a multilayered understanding of sanitation, with contributions from multiple disciplines, is necessary to facilitate inclusive and robust research toward the goal of sanitation for all.Chapter 3: The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed underlying inequities and inadequacies of infrastructure that require immediate attention. It has underscored the needs of marginalized groups, particularly those who depend on public spaces for their livelihood and on public infrastructure for access to water and sanitation. Throughout Indian history, prominent figures have made the case for accessible and well-maintained sanitation facilities in public spaces such as marketplaces, railways, and low-income areas, but this call has gone largely unheeded. As a result, during the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of migrant workers and their families crowded buses, trains, stations, and streets—or were locked down in low-income areas—with no access to clean sanitation facilities. In this chapter, I trace how distress related to epidemics has been linked to advocacy for public sanitation across India’s history. I show how disease and war constrained but also inspired past advocates to see their visions fulfilled. Informed by these lessons from the past, I recommend concrete actions for Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban in order to improve its effectiveness for the poor by focusing on public sanitation. I argue that we learn from history that pandemics are precisely when we should prioritize sanitation, especially in public spaces and particularly for the poor.

World Bank Group President David Malpass noted that Japan is now one of the largest contributors to IDA, a key partner in achieving development results at the global, regional, and country level. He mentioned that for more than 60 years, IDA has provided concessional development financing totaling more than US$458 billion to 114 countries to boost economic growth, reduce poverty and inequality, and improve people’s living conditions. He highlighted that the World Bank’s crisis response to COVID-19 has been the largest in its history, and IDA responded with speed and scale to the unprecedented economic and health crises and committed US$56.9 billion between April 2020 and November 2021. He expressed his appreciation to the IDA Borrower Representatives who have consistently offered their advice, providing a country lens on how the support can best be tailored to meet the needs and priorities of IDA countries. He spoke about the generous pledges that are matched by the most ambitious IDA policy package. He concluded by saying that cross-cutting issues are the foundational building blocks of this policy framework. These include crisis preparedness, which was introduced in IDA20 to build resilience in a world of more frequent crises with compounded effects, as well as ongoing emphasis on governance and institutions, debt sustainability, and digital infrastructure and interventions to foster economic and social inclusion.

The analyses the impact of COVID-19 pandemics on energy poverty. Comparative assessment of Lithuanian trends with EU-27 and other Baltic States was applied to identify the main differences in these trends and to provide policy implications. Three main indicators from EU-SILC database were selected to measure energy poverty: Population unable to keep home adequately warm, Arrears on utility bills and Population living in a dwelling with a leakages. Energy prices as the main indicator driving energy poverty during COVID-19 pandemic was also addressed in order to fully grasp the negative impact of pandemics on energy vulnerability and energy poverty in Lithuania. The paper also provides policy recommendations to mitigate negative impact of COVID-19 on energy poverty in Lithuania

A novel aluminum minichannel-based solar thermal collector is studied, manu- factured, and installed in this study. A mathematical model is used to study the thermal performance of the proposed collector throughout the state of California. Using satellite-derived irradiance a solar resource assessment was performed in junc- tion with the thermal performance to identify the most promising markets for this technology.Open profiles of di erent cross-sectional configurations of minichannel tubes are studied and an optimal profile is identified. The minichannel collectors are manu- factured using a gas tungsten arc welding technique and tested for leaks. Two solar collectors are installed in a single-family home in Northridge, CA and 13 collectors are installed in an apartment complex in Arleta, CA. The performance analysis done on the installed systems show e ciencies of up to 80%. In addition, preliminary estimates show a promising reduction of natural gas consumption’s in the facilities.Lastly, a copper minichannel-based solar collector for applications of medium tem- perature is modeled. The collector includes a compact minichannel heat exchanger in one of the headers, where steam is to be generated. The manufacturing and testing of the copper collector was not able to be completed due to the closing of the campus amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The 7th International Conference on Energy and Environment Research (ICEER 2020) followed six previous successful editions hosted in three European Countries (Portugal, Spain, Czech Republic). This last edition was planned to be held in Italy first, and then in Portugal, due to the pandemic situation. Finally, for safety reasons, it was decided to organize a virtual event, which was held from 14 to 17 September 2020. Despite the limitations imposed by COVID-19 spreading, the online format did not affect the original spirit of the Conference, which was born as “a privileged space to discuss current matters related to energy and the environment research”. This year the Conference main topic was “Driving Energy and Environment in 2020 towards a Sustainable Future”, bringing attention to the dramatic changes that occurred in the energy and environment sectors in the last years, speeded up by the pandemic, and their perspectives for a sustainable future. This paper gives a comprehensive outline of the conference organization as well as of the main research topics addressed in the three keynote speeches and in the dedicated sessions planned to enhance the event effectiveness and boost discussion and interaction among experts in those fields.

These remarks were delivered by the World Bank Group President David Malpass’s at the interview with James Coomarasamy on BBC Radio’s The World Tonight on May 19, 2022. He said that the key thing for the world is to create more supplies of energy of food of fertilizer, and move forward. He mentioned about lot of pressure on debt in developing countries because the contracts weren't transparent. He mentioned that there was Coronavirus (COVID-19) itself, the pandemic and the deaths but then also the shutdowns and in particular the shutdowns and closures of schools, and it is going to take years and years to make up for the educational losses that went on. He highlighted the course of inflation depends a lot on the amounts that can be added into the global economy to make up for some of the losses. He spoke about export bans are a big problem. He concluded by saying that it’s vital to end the war in Ukraine, and if that can't be done, then it's vital that countries around the world, and especially the advanced economies, announce new supplies of energy, of food and of fertilizer.

Sustainability has emerged as a central concern in business. Across all sectors, companies are looking for ways to reduce their negative environmental impact. Globally, transportation accounts for approximately a quarter of all produced carbon dioxide emissions. At the same time, companies are reliant on logistics and supply chains to function. Amid these concerns, companies are also recognizing opportunities to improve their competitiveness through embracing sustainability. Therefore, logistics operations can be seen as a major component of business operations that require radical changes in order to improve environmental sustainability. This doctoral thesis aims to explore ways for logistics industries to benefit from ongoing sustainability transitions. The main research strategy for this thesis is to carry out qualitative case studies, which are mixed with quantitative survey method, and supported by analytical and bibliometric studies. This mixed approach strengthens the exploratory nature of this research work. As exploration seldom has a clear or defined expected result, these approaches on their part structure the detailed results. Data triangulation with these methods allows close examination of novel phenomena in logistics industries as they unfold. These phenomena are often complex, and singular approaches give a narrow view on them. As the topics of this research are still developing, the exploratory nature offers a way to make necessary appendments to the existing theories in logistics and sustainability. The results of this thesis have been published in seven scientific articles, of which six are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and one is published in conference proceedings. Publication I explores business models in changing regulative and business environment. Publication II studies the case of environmental sustainability in a setting of a port and companies operating in that port. Publication III examines the development of road transport emissions development in Finnish setting. Publications IV and V study how logistics and manufacturing companies are surviving amid the Covid-19 pandemic and its implications. Publication VI is bibliometric research aimed at studying the development of scientific literature on the interplay of sustainability and innovation. Lastly, Publication VII examines logistics companies’ environmental performance and ability to self-assess in this regard. This research work showcases the emergence of sustainability as an important factor for competitiveness in the logistics industries. While some have been adapting to this change already, most are lagging. Most of the studied companies can comply with baseline regulation for now but lack the proactivity to appeal to stakeholder demands and struggle with stricter future regulations. Smaller companies especially are left in an uncomfortable situation with tightening regulations, while other events (e.g., Covid-19 and economic sanctions) are increasing the uncertainty in the studied industries. As modern societies are dependent on smaller companies acting as sub-contractors for larger enterprises, commonly beneficial solutions and policies must be found to ensure sustainability in these societies. This research work studies companies with a close case study lens with an aim to better understand the larger networks these companies form. As both logistics and sustainability are complex topics, this type of study is needed to understand the nuances and inner workings of logistics networks in relation to sustainability efforts.