The relationship between renewable energy sources and sustainable economic growth: evidence from SAARC countries.

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between renewable energy sources and sustainable economic growth of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries. This study uses three main renewable energy sources such as geothermal, hydro and wind. This study collects dataset from SAARC countries from 1995 to 2018. This study applies a fixed-effect test and panel vector error correction model (PVECM) test for data analysis. The overall results show that all three renewable energy sources have positively significant impacts on economic development among SAARC countries' economies. Moreover, the hydropower renewable energy source has more effects and influences on economic growth as relatively compared with the rest of the two individual sources of renewable energy.