From Energy Shocks to Transition Pathways: Mapping the Evolution of Global Renewable Energy Research

The increasing frequency of global energy crises, economic instability, environmental challenges, and geopolitical conflicts has been accompanied by changes in renewable energy research over the past three decades. This study presents a MATLAB R2024a-based meta-bibliometric framework for investigating the evolution of renewable energy research between January 1990 and July 2026 using integrated open-access bibliometric datasets. Bibliographic records were collected from OpenAlex, Crossref, and OpenCitations, while contextual information related to energy transition, global crises, and geopolitical events was obtained from Our World in Data, EM-DAT, and the Global Conflict Tracker. The framework integrates bibliometric indicators, temporal trend analysis, collaboration network analysis, thematic evolution, and crisis-oriented performance metrics within a unified computational environment. The findings indicate progressive publication and citation growth, expanding international collaboration, and a transition from primarily technology-oriented research toward a multidisciplinary ecosystem addressing energy security, system resilience, digitalization, energy storage, hydrogen technologies, and low-carbon energy systems. Crisis-oriented analysis further identifies changes in publication dynamics, collaboration, and thematic development across defined crisis periods. The findings also highlight the growing relevance of renewable-energy-integrated and highly energy-efficient buildings within the broader energy transition. Over the past three decades, renewable energy research has expanded alongside major changes in global energy systems, economic conditions, environmental priorities, and geopolitical circumstances. This study presents a MATLAB R2024a-based meta-bibliometric framework for investigating the evolution of renewable energy research between January 1990 and July 2026 using integrated open-access bibliographic datasets. The findings also highlight the growing relevance of renewable-energy-integrated and highly energy-efficient buildings within the broader energy transition. Overall, the study provides a computationally efficient approach for examining the structural evolution of renewable energy research under changing global conditions. The observed changes across selected disruption periods are interpreted as temporal associations rather than causal effects, recognizing that scientific trajectories are also shaped by technological, economic, policy, institutional, and broader scientific developments.