Renewable Energy and Firm Performance: A Bibliometric and Science Mapping Analysis of the Literature

Abstract

Climate change is a major issue for ecosystems, the economy, human health and livelihoods. Therefore, it has been important to build international cooperation and increase investment between governments and companies to effectively address climate change through emissions reduction and environmental protection. This study aims to review and reflect on studies on the effect of renewable energy on firm performance. For this purpose, an analysis of studies on the effect of renewable energy on the performance of firms using renewable energy sources was conducted. This study conducts a bibliometric analysis for a systematic literature review that examines 1953 scientific studies on the effect of renewable energy on firm performance from 1993 to 2025.VOSviewer software was used to analyze the data and visualize the findings using the Web of Science database. The findings are presented in nine categories: distribution of studies by year, distribution of studies by genre, distribution of studies by language of writing, author-source- country-institution-keywords analysis.The analysis reveals a significant increase in annual publications on renewable energy sources and firm performance, indicating a growing global interest in renewable energy. Moreover, the country with the most publications is the People's Republic of China. The author with the most publications and most citations is Saad Mekhilef. The institution with the most publications is “Xi an Jiao Univ” and the source with the most publications is “Energies”. The most used word in the studies is “renewable energy”. The concept of sustaınability, which is involved to renewable energy, ranked 12th in the list of frequently used words, and this may be thought to be due to the fact that this concept is more up to date than the others. The direction of the studies to be conducted in this field will fill the gap in the literature.