Currently the "green" economy is an important part of positioning in the international arena as an environmental component of sustainable development. Russia, as an active party in the international arena, supports resolutions on the "green" economy development and "green" financing tools for resolving issues of climate-resistant economic growth. Factors and trends in the Russian "green" economy development are radically different from most developed countries. At the same time, Russia has undeniable advantages in terms of preserving natural landscapes and the ecosystem services' potential. Russia also has huge and almost unused opportunities for "green" growth. Our article is devoted to these problematic economic issues related to the "green" investment development. It is a basis for environmentally sustainable evolution. We discuss the latest trends and facts in the the"green" economy development of Russia. In addition, we describe possible promising directions for its growth in the future. Our results can be interesting and useful for researchers and experts working in the field of strategic management, spatial development and innovation economics. It is attractive for stakeholders and politicians involved in the economics and environment issues.

Recently, the approaches of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the renewable energy development have changed with the new global approach to sustainability. Today, CSR is an evolving and dominating business practice that integrates sustainable development into a company’s business model. The main focus of our paper is on the public relations of corporate social responsibility in renewable energy development. We show that a proper approach to public relations and resulting communication and dissemination of products and results should be sustained. This paper assesses the new pathways for executing public relations for CSR with relation to the renewable energy projects. The study analyses the impact of corporate social responsibility on energy companies, which are expected to make a positive contribution to the development of sustainable energy. We use both the overview of the theoretical concepts and literature as well as analyze the case of the “old” and “new” European Union Member countries represented by the Baltic States that yield many similarities but differ in their economic development to show the best practices of promoting CSR in sustainable energy development. Our results demonstrate that the implementation of corporate social responsibility can help to create more ethical and conscious sustainable companies and to build better relationships with the environmentally engaged citizens and loyal customers who are also concerned about the environment, health and well-being of their communities.

This paper focuses on the strategies that employ the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks in the optimal management of demand-side response in the future energy systems with the high penetration of renewable energy sources (RES). It also provides a comparison between advantages and challenges of 5G networks in demand-response renewable energy grids. Large-scale renewable energy integration always leads to a mismatch between generation and load demand in the short run due to the intermittency. It is often envisioned that 5G wireless networks that were recently launched and would most likely be fully deployed worldwide by 2035 would bring many technological and economic benefits for a plethora of the future high-renewables grids featuring electric transport and heating as well as prosumers generating renewable energy and trading it back to the grid (for example, in the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) framework) and among themselves using peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Our paper offers a comprehensive analysis of 5G architecture with the perspectives of optimal management of demand-side response in the smart grids of the future. We show that the effective deployment of faster and more reliable wireless networks would allow faster data transfers and processing, including peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trade market, Internet of Vehicles (IoV) market, or faster smart metering, and thence open the path for the full-fledged Internet of Energy (IoE). Moreover, we show that 5G wireless networks might become in the future sustainable energy systems paving the road to even more advanced technologies and the new generations of networks. In addition, we demonstrate that for the effective management of energy demand-side response with a high share of renewables, certain forms of governments funding and incentives might be needed. These are required to strengthen the support of RES and helping to shift to the green economy.

Modern people live in the era of knowledge and digitalization supposed to increase their quality of life. Nevertheless, digital technologies are only the instruments in the development and transformation of social-economic processes and their usage per se does not ensure only positive effects, which much depends on goals, conditions, institutes, etc. Thus, digitalization has an unambiguous influence on many social-economic processes and needs a wise policy to provide smooth progress and well-being for everybody. This study aims to design and test appropriate tools for managing digitalization to direct this process on increasing the quality of life. For this purpose we analyzed: (1) correlation to identify interrelations between digitalization and quality of life; (2) the potential of using the visualization matrix method to identify and monitor national trends of digitalization in the context of quality of life. We found: (1) close correlation between subjective and objective indicators of quality of life and between the quality of life and digitalization; (2) the two-dimensional matrix turned out to be a relevant visual tool that embraces specific two-way relationships between human development and digitalization. In combination with statistical and qualitative methods, this tool has wide prospects for managing digitalization in the context of social progress and increasing quality of life.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of bank financing on innovative development of Russian circumpolar area and identifying the barriers to its development. Design/methodology/approach Using the abstract-logical method and a set of methods of economic, statistical and econometric analysis (panel data analysis) the authors examine the role of financial intermediaries in innovative development of Russia and Russian arctic regions. Findings The key financial intermediaries in the Russian economy have historically been the banks, which are, at the same time, as it follows from the analysis above, inertly participating in the innovative development financing in the Russian circumpolar regions. Assessment of the potential intensification of the role of banks in the innovative ecosystems has shown that, despite the development of institutional conditions of banks’ resource base compounding and the development of funding, high risks of innovation, multiplying in a volatile external environment, prevent the inflow of bank capital into the innovation sector. Research limitations/implications Main limitation is the inability of panel data to capture long-term impacts of bank financing on innovative development of Russian circumpolar area. Practical implications The results suggest that the intensification of the banks’ participation in financing innovation and overcoming the existing challenges will enable to stimulate the process of innovation development of the circumpolar zone in Russia. Originality/value There is no study evaluating the impact of bank financing on innovative development of Russian arctic regions.