Renewable energies and circular economies: A systematic literature review before the ChatGPT boom

Abstract

This work investigates how the circular economy (CE) and renewable energies (REs) were contextualised over 23 years of scientific research, comprising the period between the years 2011 and 2023. The following questions are addressed: 1) how are the topics of the CE and REs related? 2) what research topics are trending around these concepts? A collection of 751 articles from Scopus was obtained. The documents contained at least one of the investigated terms (CE or REs) in either the title, abstract or keywords. Our results disclose the most similar documents, the leading articles and the characteristic topics for each year, indicating that research around the CE and REs has been growing in importance in recent years. Concepts such as ‘biomass digesters’, ‘energy transition’, ‘microalgae technology’ and ‘sustainable consumption’ are positioned as the main research fields. This work intends to serve as a reference for readers seeking insights about systematic literature reviews in areas of the CE and REs at the time of the chatbot boom.