---
title: "SDG 7 Affordable and clean energy: research papers"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy) was addressed by 15,989 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (10,508), operations research (2,317) and AI (1,737). It is #8 of the 17 goals by papers from 2023 to 2025 (5,984)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/7-affordable-and-clean-energy
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/7-affordable-and-clean-energy.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy) was addressed by 15,989 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (10,508), operations research (2,317) and AI (1,737). (as of 2026-10-31)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-10-31T17:45:59+09:00
window: 2026-10-02 to 2026-10-31
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# SDG 7: Affordable and clean energy

Papers in the tracked journals on UN Sustainable Development Goal 7, Affordable and clean energy. OpenAlex assigns a paper to each UN Sustainable Development Goal that its classifier scores above 0.4 from the paper's text; a paper can belong to several goals or to none.

All 17 goals: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/sdgs.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy) was addressed by 15,989 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (10,508), operations research (2,317) and AI (1,737).
- It is #8 of the 17 goals by papers from 2023 to 2025 (5,984).
- 2,266 of them were published in 2025, against 1,180 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Xiamen University (112), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (110) and Beijing Institute of Technology (105).
- The journals publishing most of them were Energy Policy (1,502), Energy Economics (1,348) and Expert Systems with Applications (527).
- The most-cited of them is “Digitalization and energy: How does internet development affect China's energy consumption?” (Energy Economics, 2021), with 933 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 921 | 974 | 945 | 1,000 | 942 | 965 | 1,109 | 1,167 | 1,312 | 1,173 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 156 | 158 | 159 | 159 | 198 | 229 | 246 | 275 | 371 | 366 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 58 | 63 | 79 | 82 | 135 | 214 | 249 | 275 | 346 | 236 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 24 | 47 | 48 | 65 | 89 | 112 | 100 | 110 | 72 | 70 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 7 | 11 | 13 | 19 | 37 | 31 | 59 | 98 | 145 | 123 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 6 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 15 | 12 | 11 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 3 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 4 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 3 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| All categories | 1,180 | 1,262 | 1,249 | 1,340 | 1,419 | 1,563 | 1,769 | 1,949 | 2,266 | 1,992 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Energy Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-policy.md) | 1,502 |
| 2 | [Energy Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-economics.md) | 1,348 |
| 3 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 527 |
| 4 | [Utilities Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/utilities-policy.md) | 456 |
| 5 | [Resources Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/resources-policy.md) | 306 |
| 6 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 207 |
| 7 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 192 |
| 8 | [Economic Analysis and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/economic-analysis-and-policy.md) | 157 |
| 9 | [Technological Forecasting and Social Change](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/technological-forecasting-and-social-change.md) | 131 |
| 10 | [Transport Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transport-policy.md) | 121 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Xiamen University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xiamen-university.md) | 112 |
| 2 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 110 |
| 3 | [Beijing Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beijing-institute-of-technology.md) | 105 |
| 4 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 100 |
| 5 | Lebanese American University | 98 |
| 6 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 92 |
| 7 | [Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/centre-national-de-la-recherche-scientifique.md) | 89 |
| 8 | [Renmin University of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/renmin-university-of-china.md) | 85 |
| 9 | Norwegian University of Science and Technology | 75 |
| 10 | North China Electric Power University | 74 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 3,007 |
| 2 | United States | 986 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 702 |
| 4 | Germany | 490 |
| 5 | Australia | 461 |
| 6 | France | 403 |
| 7 | India | 396 |
| 8 | Italy | 353 |
| 9 | Spain | 303 |
| 10 | Turkey | 293 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [energy transition](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/energy-transition.md) | 834 |
| 2 | [China](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/china.md) | 607 |
| 3 | energy efficiency | 433 |
| 4 | renewable energy | 430 |
| 5 | energy security | 331 |
| 6 | [CO2 emissions](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/co2-emissions.md) | 329 |
| 7 | energy policy | 289 |
| 8 | energy poverty | 280 |
| 9 | decarbonization | 273 |
| 10 | electric vehicles | 234 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 933 | 13.8 | [Digitalization and energy: How does internet development affect China's energy consumption?](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105220) | [Energy Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-economics.md) | 2021-03-18 | Siyu Ren, Yu Hao, Lu Xu et al. |
| 2 | 880 | 11.7 | [How do environmental regulation and environmental decentralization affect green total factor energy efficiency: Evidence from China](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2020.104880) | [Energy Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-economics.md) | 2020-07-24 | Haitao Wu, Yu Hao, Siyu Ren |
| 3 | 868 | 7.7 | [Politicizing energy justice and energy system transitions: Fossil fuel divestment and a “just transition”](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.06.014) | [Energy Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-policy.md) | 2017-06-27 | Noel Healy, John Barry |
| 4 | 834 | 7.2 | [New frontiers and conceptual frameworks for energy justice](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.03.005) | [Energy Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-policy.md) | 2017-03-18 | Benjamin Kenneth Sovacool, Matthew J. Burke, Lucy Baker et al. |
| 5 | 792 | 9.9 | [Predicting the state of charge and health of batteries using data-driven machine learning](https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-0156-7) | [Nature Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/nature-machine-intelligence.md) | 2020-03-02 | Man‐Fai Ng, Jin Cai Zhao, Qingyu Yan et al. |
| 6 | 768 | 9.0 | [Institutional quality, green innovation and energy efficiency](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2019.111002) | [Energy Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-policy.md) | 2019-09-27 | Huaping Sun, Bless Kofi Edziah, Chuanwang Sun et al. |
| 7 | 758 | 7.0 | [Accurate photovoltaic power forecasting models using deep LSTM-RNN](https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-017-3225-z) | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 2017-10-14 | Mohamed Abdel‐Nasser, Karar Mahmoud |
| 8 | 751 | 8.3 | [The way to induce private participation in green finance and investment](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2019.04.016) | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 2019-04-08 | Farhad Taghizadeh Hesary, Naoyuki Yoshino |
| 9 | 716 | 7.6 | [How much does financial development contribute to renewable energy growth and upgrading of energy structure in China?](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.12.047) | [Energy Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-policy.md) | 2019-01-08 | Qiang Ji, Dayong Zhang |
| 10 | 703 | 6.2 | [Financing renewable energy: Who is financing what and why it matters](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.05.021) | [Technological Forecasting and Social Change](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/technological-forecasting-and-social-change.md) | 2017-06-08 | Mariana Mazzucato, Gregor Semieniuk |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). SDG 7: Affordable and clean energy. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 31, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/7-affordable-and-clean-energy

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-sdgs-7-affordable-and-clean-energy,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {SDG 7: Affordable and clean energy},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/7-affordable-and-clean-energy}},
  urldate = {2026-10-31},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).