How does external debt and governance quality impact renewable energy consumption: novel policy insights from BRICS countries.

Amidst global environmental reforms, the role of energy systems is under scrutiny to promote ecological welfare through low-carbon alternatives. Amongst the solutions, the role of renewable energy as a clean source has become popular to mitigate climate change. However, the impact of debt on renewable energy consumption remains limited in the economic literature. The debt initiatives provide funding for environmental initiatives primarily, while it is also credited as a barrier to limiting the growth of clean energy programs. Within such discussion, the current study extended the dialogue by examining how external debt impacts energy transition in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) economies in the presence of institutional quality, education expenditures, and banking development. Using the novel CS-ARDL, AMG, and CCEMG tests, the study results showed that external debt decreases renewable energy consumption, while institutional quality, educational expenditures, banking developments, and economic growth are essential elements of green energy developments. Based on these conclusions, this study provides novel policy guidelines to align BRICS energy and economic agendas.

Appraisal of CO2 emission in Tunisia's industrial sector: a dynamic vector autoregression method.

The world is confronted with a slew of environmental issues, one of which is attenuating the detrimental impacts of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission-induced climate change. The ever-increasing use of energy is eroding natural resources to the point that our economic future may be jeopardized. The Tunisian economic growth indicates the excellent performance in the industrial sector as the minimum required input for these developments which necessitate additional energy consumption, resulting in increased CO2 emissions and environmental degradation. This study explores the role of energy efficiency, urbanization, economic growth, and natural gas energy usage in the industrial sector on the CO2 emissions of Tunisia. The research mainly employs the vector autoregressive model (VAR) to examine the factors driving the evolution of CO2 emissions through the industrial sector from 2000 to 2018. The findings assess that natural gas as an energy source and efficiency is crucial for reducing CO2 emissions. The study has shown the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), which demonstrates that economic development in Tunisia has an inverted U-shape connection with CO2 emissions. The findings show that energy consumption and GDP have a considerable impact on CO2 emissions due to large-scale population changes and industrial structure alteration. In contrast, energy efficiency is a key factor in lowering CO2 emissions. Based on the study's results, the article will enable economic decision-makers and relevant authorities to develop an appropriate energy strategy for the industrial sector to safeguard environmental deterioration in the long term by lowering carbon emissions.

An outlook on the development of renewable energy, policy measures to reshape the current energy mix, and how to achieve sustainable economic growth in the post COVID-19 era.

Currently, COVID-19 due to emergence of various variants shows no signs of slowing down and has affected every aspect of life with significant negative impact on economic and energy structures around the world. As a result, the governments around the world have introduced policy responses to help businesses and industrial units to overcome the consequences of compliance with COVID-19 strategies. Our analysis indicates that global energy sector is one of the most severely affected industries as energy price mechanisms, energy demand, and energy supply have shown great uncertainty under these unprecedented economic and social changes. In this regard, we provide brief overview of demand, supply, and pricing structure of energy products as well as policy mechanisms to provide better outlook about how industrial sector can cope with energy consumption in the post pandemic era. We further propose changes in the existing policy mechanisms so that transition towards renewable energy sources under different environmental agreements can be achieved. Moreover, as a reference, we outline major challenges and policy recommendations to ease energy transition from fossil fuels to environmental friendly energy mix.