Decarbonization: examining the role of environmental innovation versus renewable energy use.

Climate change resulting from a rapid increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is adversely affecting humanity. If the GHG emission continues to rise at the current pace, humanity will face severe consequences and reverse all the progress made. This paper, therefore, uses relevant data from 14 developing countries in Asia from 1990 to 2018 to examine the potential impact of environmental innovation on CO2 emissions by controlling globalization, urbanization, and economic growth. The number of environmental-related technology patents is used as a measure of environmental innovation. We employed a panel long-run regression model - FMOLS, PCSE, and FGLS to estimate the elasticity of CO2 emissions. For causal association among variables, we used Dumitrescu-Hurlin Granger causality tests. Our results show that renewable energy consumption and globalization have a significant impact in reducing CO2 emissions, while environmental technology innovations play a meager role in reducing emissions and only when economic growth support those type of investment. Furthermore, we found urbanization, oil consumption, and economic growth is detrimental to the environment, which is also evident in past studies. Therefore, countries should invest in renewable energy and environmental innovation aligned with the growth to reduce GHG emissions.

What matters for environmental quality in the Next Eleven Countries: economic growth or income inequality?

This study uses panel data for the period 1971-2013 to explore the implications of growth, wealth disparities, and per capita energy consumption on carbon emissions in a sample of Next Eleven (N-11) countries. It uses the first-generation (Pedroni and Kao) and second-generation (Westerlund) cointegration techniques to highlight a long-run interplay between the selected variables in carbon emission functions for all the N-11 countries. It also analyzes the long-run interactions among the series. Contrastingly, it also shows that economic growth, income inequalities, and per capita energy consumption accelerate CO2 emissions. Besides examining the effects of wealth disparity square, the study also uses the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in the context of the N-11 countries and discusses the policy implications of its findings.

Is skewed income distribution good for environmental quality? A comparative analysis among selected BRICS countries.

A large number of studies have examined the linkage between income inequality and environmental quality at the individual country levels. This study attempts to examine the linkage between the two factors for the individual BRICS economies from a comparative perspective, which is scarce in the literature. It examines the selected countries (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) by endogenising the patterns of primary energy consumption (coal use and petroleum use), total primary energy consumption, economic growth, and urbanisation as key determining factors in CO2 emission function. The long-run results based on ARDL bounds testing revealed that income inequality leads to increase in CO2 emissions for Brazil, India and China, while the same factor leads to reduction in CO2 emissions for South Africa. However, it observes that while coal use increases CO2 emissions for India, China and South Africa, it has no effect for Brazil. In contrast, the use of petroleum products contributes to CO2 emissions in Brazil, while the use of the same surprisingly results in reduction of carbon emissions in South Africa, India and China. The findings suggest that given the significance of income inequality in environmental pollution, the policy makers in these emerging economies have to take into consideration the role of income inequality, while designing the energy policy to achieve environmental sustainability.