Published in collaboration with the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO)

The European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) publishes high quality, original papers that contribute to the methodology of operational research (OR) and to the practice of decision making. EJOR contains the following types of papers:

• Invited Reviews, explaining to the general OR audience the developments in an OR topic over the recent years
• Innovative Applications of OR, describing novel ways to solve real problems
• Theory and Methodology Papers, presenting original research results contributing to the methodology of OR and to its theoretical foundations,
• Short Communications, if they correct important errors found in papers previously published in EJOR

The Theory and Methodology Papers are classified into one of the seven headings:

• Continuous Optimization
• Discrete Optimization
• Production, Manufacturing and Logistics
• Stochastics and Statistics
• Decision Support
• Computational Intelligence and Information Management
• Interfaces with Other Disciplines

Special Issue on The Complexity of the Energy Transition
Submission Date: 2024-08-31

The last few decades have been marked by an increase in the frequency of global crises, from the subprime mortgage crisis, to the pandemic which seems to be coming to an end, and the recent geopolitical crisis. While the energy shortage seems to be reigniting inflation-related problems, on the horizon looms, almost inexorably, the future climate crisis. Addressing this challenge requires reducing carbon emissions and improving energy efficiency. Production systems must change both in terms of production inputs, increasingly using renewable resources and reducing the share of fossil fuels, and in terms of production processes, adopting green technologies. Uncertainty and heterogeneity of economic agents strongly characterize this new evolution of the economic system. Therefore, new theoretical and empirical models are needed that are able to grasp this complexity and provide new results in line with the processes underway. The rapid rise of analytics in Operations Research, evidenced by the growing number of academic publications, can certainly provide new answers to problems related to the complexity of the energy transition. Indeed, the energy transition and the current macroeconomic environment imply the use of analytical methods of problem-solving and decision-making, which are useful for the choices of economic agents and policy makers. In order to address the theoretical and empirical challenges facing us in the future, it is appropriate, to develop optimization models (in continuous and discrete time). High uncertainty implies the development of stochastic models for investment choices and empirical models for studying the main variables that impact the economic system. The heterogeneity of market supply and demand, imply the use of specific models that can capture the complexity of economic choices.

Guest editors:

Peter Kort, Tilburg University, Kort@tilburguniversity.edu, https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/staff/kort

Francesco Menoncin, University of Brescia, francesco.menoncin@unibs.it, https://sites.google.com/view/francesco-menoncin/home

Jacco Thijssen, York University, jacco.thijssen@york.ac.uk, https://www.york.ac.uk/management/staff/jacco-thijssen/

Sergio Vergalli, University of Brescia, sergio.vergalli@unibs.it, www.sergiovergalli.it

Special issue information:

This special issue will try to take up this challenge, studying energy markets, the economic and environmental impacts of new production technologies and new green policies. We invite high-quality submissions addressing theoretical and algorithmic developments advancing the theory and methodology of operational research, as well as real-world innovative implementations in the areas of decision mechanisms in energy markets and energy pricing, smart grid design and management, and environmental and energy efficiency.

The Special Issue seeks to publish novel research and reflect the most recent advances on the latest contributions on the above areas, covering new modeling techniques and formulations, as well as innovative case studies. Contributions will be selected through a refereeing process consistent with the standard reviewing process of the European Journal of Operational Research. Only original contributions of the highest quality, within the scope of the European Journal of Operational Research will be considered. This Special Issue should be of benefit to policy-makers and researchers worldwide, wherever there is a need to overcome challenges, design policy options, strive for new technological breakthroughs and seek investment opportunities towards a new era of energy transition.

We invite contributions on the following topics, among others:

- Continuous and discrete Optimization
- Stochastics and Statistics
- Interpretable decision-making methods under uncertainty
- New model evaluation metrics
- electricity storage systems: optimal management and economic impact sectoral decarbonization and energy restructuring
- agent-based models applied to energy and environmental market
- macro models studying future scenario
- derivatives on energy markets, weather derivatives
- economics of new renewable energy technologies
- energy efficiency and the rebound effect
- historical energy transitions (biomass to coal, coal to oil etc.)
- role of energy in economic growth
- energy and climate change
- energy security
- economics of unconventional fossil fuels
- environmental policies, strategic adoption of technologies and switching of energy sources
- feasibility of future scenarios.

It is worth noting that papers on these topics should be in line with the guidelines of the journal and thus have a link to OR theory and methodology through relevant references to the OR literature and also have interfaces with other disciplines.

Manuscript submission information:

The Journal’s submission system is open for submissions to our Special Issue. When submitting your manuscript please select the article type “VSI: Complexity transition”. Please submit your manuscript before August 31, 2024.

The submission link is: https://www.editorialmanager.com/ejor

All submissions deemed suitable to be sent for peer review will be reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. Once your manuscript is accepted, it will go into production, and will be simultaneously published in the current regular issue and pulled into the online Special Issue. Articles from this Special Issue will appear in different regular issues of the journal, though they will be clearly marked and branded as Special Issue articles.

Please see an example here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/european-journal-of-operational-research