Ecological footprint in the OECD countries: do energy efficiency and renewable energy matter?

Ecological footprint (EFP) measures the amount of area, that is land or sea, which is required to absorb the waste generated through human activities or to support the production of resources consumed by populations. EFP index therefore includes six dimensions that are cropland, forestland, carbon, fishing grounds, grazing land, and built-up area. Human activities have impacted the environment, leading to global warming, widespread droughts, and diseases. The present study aims to investigate the role of renewable energy (RE) and energy efficiency on the EFP index. Past researchers have widely used carbon emission (CE) to represent environmental impact, and recent studies have shown that EFP index is a better proxy of environmental degradation. Therefore, the present research differs from past studies in that it compares on how the determinants of environmental degradation affects EFP index and CE. Panel dataset of the OECD countries from 1990 to 2020 is employed. The CS-ARDL, DCCEMG, and AMG techniques, which overcome dynamics, heterogeneity, and cross-sectional dependence, are employed. The main findings depict that RE significantly reduces EFP and CE, while economic growth significantly exacerbates them. Energy efficiency reduces CE, but does not significantly affect EFP. Non-renewable energy and research & development significantly increase CE, while an insignificant positive effect is observed with EFP. This paper shows that factors that significantly influence CE may not always significantly affect the EFP index. Thus, to reduce environmental degradation it is fundamental to understand on how each dimension of EFP is influenced.

The role forest resources, energy efficiency, and renewable energy in promoting environmental quality.

At a time when environmental concerns are rising in the world, natural resources, such as trees and other green plants, remain the most crucial factors responsible for reducing environmental degradation. Green plants inhale carbon dioxide and prevent the soil from wash and wear, hence their significant role in enhancing environmental quality. Therefore, it is essential to come up with state-of-the-art researches on the role of green plants to the environment. The present research is aimed at adding to the growing body of literature by investigating the effect of forest resources, together with renewable energy and energy efficiency in enhancing environmental quality. In this research, we use the data of the seven emerging countries, seven developed nations and 15 developing west African nations, from 1990 to 2019. The current research adds to the growing body of literature in that it presents a comparative analysis of the three important economic blocks, as well as employing three major methodologies of data analysis, the CS-ARDL, AMG, and CCEMG techniques, which are strong over cross-sectional dependence, heterogeneity, and dynamics. Major research outcomes show that renewable energy and energy efficiency negatively affects carbon emissions, while gross domestic product positively affects carbon emissions in all three regions. Population size and forest resources reduces carbon emissions in the emerging countries and seven developed countries, respectively. Non-renewable energy promotes carbon emissions in the seven developed countries, while in the emerging countries it reduces emissions. This research recommends the efficient utilization of energy, use of renewable energy, and forest preservation to promote carbon neutrality goal.

Russia-Ukraine war impacts on climate initiatives and sustainable development objectives in top European gas importers.

Russia holds the position of being the third largest global producer of oil and plays a significant role in the supply of oil and gas to Europe. The ongoing war conflict has the potential to impede the bilateral and multilateral relations between Russia and Europe. The ramifications of this event will have notable reverberations for environmental endeavors in Europe. The aforementioned premise forms the basis of our investigation, wherein we scrutinize the correlation among oil price, coal price, gas price, economic growth, and coal consumption, while taking into account the ramifications of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. We adopted fully "modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS), and canonical cointegration regression (CCR)" econometric techniques to gauge the nexus between factors of interest in the top 4 European Russian gas importer economies (Poland, Netherland, Hungry, and Germany). The empirical outcomes reveal substantial negative impact of economic growth and coal price elasticity on the coal consumption. On the contrary, oil and gas price elasticities depict significant positive influence on the coal consumption. Hence, this study concludes that a rise in oil and gas prices leads to an increase in coal consumption, which in turn negatively impacts environmental quality. Furthermore, the occurrence of war has the potential to impede the utilization of coal resources in Netherlands and Hungary. On the other hand, the impact of war is noteworthy and constructive in Poland and Germany. Thus, war results ecological imbalance in Poland and Germany in particular. Governments, decision-makers, stakeholders, and environmentalists must develop a long-term plan that calls for a paradigm shift away from gas, oil, and coal usage and toward more environmentally benign renewable energy sources.

The impact of energy efficiency in reducing environmental degradation: does renewable energy and forest resources matter?

The vast utilisation of energy sources in promoting economic growth has been identified as the major cause of environmental degradation (through carbon emission). Therefore, the efficient utilisation of energy ensuring the minimisation of any wastages is vital in reducing environmental degradation. The current research aims to investigate the importance of energy efficiency, forest resources, and renewable energy in reducing environmental degradation. The major novelty of the research is that it seeks to investigate the impact of forest resources and energy efficiency on carbon emissions. Literature shows that there is still a dearth on the association of forest resources and energy efficiency, with carbon emissions. We employ data of the European Union countries for the time frame ranging from 1990 to 2020. The CS-ARDL technique depicts that raising GDP by 1% raises carbon emissions by 5.62% in the short run and 2.93% in the long run, raising renewable energy by 1 unit reduces carbon emissions by 0.098 and 0.03 units in the short and long run, respectively, whilst raising energy efficiency by 1% reduces carbon emissions by 6.29% and 3.29% in the short and long run, respectively. The Fixed Effect and Random Effect tools support the outcomes of the CS-ARDL tool on the negative effect of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and the positive effect of GDP on carbon emissions, and also depict that raising non-renewable energy by a single unit raises carbon emissions by 0.07 and 0.08 units, respectively. Forest resources, in this present research, do not significantly impact the emissions of carbon amongst the European nations.

Investigating the Causality Between Financial Development and Carbon Emissions: A Quantile-Based Analysis.

The relationship between financial development and environmental sustainability has received significant attention in academic discourse. This study explores the crucial role of financial development in addressing the challenge of increasing CO2 emissions. Using quantile-on-quantile and nonparametric causality-in-quantile methodologies, this research investigates the impacts and causal links between financial market and institution development and CO2 emissions levels in five major polluting countries from 1990 to 2019. The findings provide strong evidence regarding the impact of financial institutions and financial market development on CO2 emissions, demonstrating the presence of shocks and nonparametric causality from financial institutions and financial market development to CO2 emissions quantiles. However, the effects of financial institution shocks and nonparametric causality are diverse and asymmetric across the sample. Positive and negative shocks are observed in India, while only negative shocks are observed in China, the USA, Russia, and Japan. Moreover, the findings reveal that the influence of financial market development on CO2 emissions varies across countries, with both positive and negative shocks transmitted to CO2 emissions in the USA, Russia, and Japan, indicating higher volatility in these countries compared to China and India, where only negative shocks are observed. Therefore, our recommendation emphasizes the prioritization of environmentally conscious financial products and the enhancement of the financial system's capacity to mitigate positive shocks contributing to increased CO2 emissions. Implementing this strategy requires collective efforts to embrace sustainable financial practices that consider the environmental impact of financial activities.

Do banking sector development, economic growth, and clean energy consumption scale up green finance investment for a sustainable environment in South Asia: evidence for newly developed RALS co-integration.

Concern about climate change is spreading around the globe. The urge to comprehend the environmental effects and take action is sharply rising. Regarding this, the banking industry has a great chance to offer a solution in terms of green financial solutions and can meet the needs of carbon-conscious organizations to combat and defend our planet. Therefore, in light of this, according to the greatest understanding of the authors, this is the first study to investigate the role of banking sector development, economic growth, and clean energy consumption in scaling up green finance investment in South Asian nations, taking carbon emissions, foreign direct investment, remittances, inflation, and trade openness as control variables. This study uses a novel residual augmented least squares-Engle and Granger (RALS-EG) co-integration to test the long-term link and the quantile autoregressive distributed lag (QARDL) econometric approach to extract the association across the quantiles (q0.05-q0.95) for the period 2000-2020. The outcomes of QARDL show that banking sector development, economic growth, clean energy, carbon emissions, foreign direct investment, remittances, and trade openness play a positive role in attracting green finance in the long term. However, only inflation has a negative influence on scaling up finance in South Asian nations. Therefore, the concerned authorities (government, central banks, environmentalists, and policymakers) are urged to implement green finance policies and strategies as suggested and recommended by the results of this study.

The effect of GDP, renewable energy and total energy supply on carbon emissions in the EU-27: new evidence from panel GMM.

The vast usages of sources of energy that pollute the environment have resulted in major problems of global warming in the world. Global warming and greenhouse effect causes droughts, hunger, and starvation among many other health problems. In this research, the effect of energy use, economic, growth, and renewable energy on carbon emissions, in the European Union region from 1990 to 2019, is examined. The current study differs from previous researches, in that it specifies "effective capital" which is the interaction between energy and capital (a product of energy and capital) in the model. Effective capital is inevitable in the production process because physical capital such as machinery, without power or energy to fuel it, is dysfunctional. The current research employs the Generalized Method of Moments which is strong over endogeneity and overcomes heteroskedasticity, serial, and autocorrelation problems. The findings of this research support past studies that renewable energy reduces carbon emissions and gross domestic product exacerbates carbon emissions. Effective capital and energy use are observed to promote carbon emissions, whereas capital and population size reduces carbon emissions in the European Union.

Exchange rate stability in the emerging economies: does renewable energy play a role-a panel data analysis.

Due to the high and rising rates of carbon emissions, the use of renewable energy sources has been encouraged to help achieve carbon neutrality goal. However, renewable energy sources are said to be expensive than fossil fuels. Major studies have been undertaken to ascertain the association between renewable energy and many economic indicators, such as gross domestic product, employment rate, and inflation rate. The current study is aimed at investigating whether renewable energy use helps stabilize the foreign exchange rate of emerging economies, which has not been widely examined in the past, hence the study originality. Stability in the foreign exchange rate of a nation is very crucial as this helps to stabilize the inflation rate. This study employs the fully modified ordinary least and dynamic ordinary least square methods to analyze panel data of emerging economies. The findings indicate that high real interest rate and gross domestic product causes appreciation in the currency exchange of a country, while high balance of payment, inflation rate and renewable energy consumption are found to cause currency depreciation. The Pedroni and Kao cointegration tests are employed and the results show that a long-run relationship exists among the variables examined. This research recommends balance of payments and inflation rate to be minimized if exchange rate stability is to be achieved, while gross domestic product and real interest rate should be increased.

Nexus between energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission: evidence from 10 highest fossil fuel and 10 highest renewable energy-using economies.

The world, addressing to achieve rapid and drastic economic growth by relying on fossil fuel energy consumption, could increase already increasing level of carbon dioxide (CO2). Therefore, there is a growing consensus that environmental sustainability by using renewable energy is the only option to avoid environmental calamity. Therefore, according to the authors' best knowledge, this is the first work to look into the short and long-run nexus between economic growth, trade openness, renewable and fossil fuel energy consumption, along with gross capital formation, population growth, and life expectancy as additional variables in top 10 highest renewable energy-using (TRU) economies and top 10 highest fossil fuel-using (TFU) economies from 1991 to 2020, by employing advanced panel data econometric approach. After demonstrating cross-sectional dependency in panel data, the Westerlund cointegration test verifies the long-term link between the variables. A cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) econometric technique is used to show short- and long-run coefficient values. CS-ARDL estimates confirm that the economic growth, fossil fuel energy, trade openness, and gross capital formation increase carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions levels in the short run for TRU and FEU economies, except for gross capital formation for FEU economies. However, economic growth adds to CO2 emissions for only TRU economies, while fossil fuel energy consumption enhances CO2 emissions for both groups of economies in the long run. On the contrary, renewable energy reduces CO2 emissions in the short and long run, while human capital in only the short run. The inferences of this study present new intuitions and urge governments and policymakers to develop a reliable mechanism for investing capital to diversify the energy portfolio through the energy transition process to attain sustainable economic growth and promote awareness campaigns to draw the attention of human capital to environmentally friendly, clean, and green energy sources. Overall, the results recommended energy efficiency usage and ecological friendly innovative technologies to enhance and protect environmental quality.

The impact of renewable energy consumption on economic growth in Nigeria: fresh evidence from a non-linear ARDL approach.

The topic of climate change is so crucial that experts, world leaders, and international organizations are constantly working on how to solve this problem. One of the recommendations lies in using renewable energy to protect the global ecosystem and promote environmental sustainability. This study, therefore, examines the impact of renewable energy consumption (RNEW) on economic growth (RGDP) in Nigeria within the period of 1990Q1-2019Q4 using a non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model. This research contributes to existing literature by focusing on a single-country analysis using the NARDL methodology. Nigeria has the highest GDP in Africa and can drive continental growth. In addition, the NARDL approach examines the positive and negative shocks of the independent variables on the dependent variable. The bound test result confirms cointegration among the variables. Further results show that a positive shock of RNEW decreases RGDP, while a negative shock increases RGDP in the long run. This result differs from existing literature in which a majority of the studies found a positive relationship between RNEW and RGDP. In the short run, a positive shock of RNEW increases RGDP, while a negative shock decreases RGDP, although not significant. A positive shock in RNEW hurts RGDP because of the nature and source of renewable energy used in Nigeria, majorly wood biomass. Therefore, this study recommends that cleaner technologies be utilized to maximize the advantages of renewable energy sources, especially wood biomass, while minimizing their adverse effects.