How renewable energy consumption contribute to environmental quality? The role of education in OECD countries

By Muhammad Wasif Zafar, Muhammad Shahbaz, Avik Sinha, Tuhin Sengupta, Q. Qin. 2020

395 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Designing a comprehensive policy framework for ascertaining sustainable development is a problem faced by most of the countries around the globe, and the developed nations are no exception to that. Environmental awareness-oriented policy design for achieving sustainable development goals is a challenge for the developed nations, and there lies the contribution of this study. This study analyzes the impact of renewable energy on carbon emissions, in presence of education, natural resource abundance, foreign direct investment, and economic growth for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period of 1990-2015. Second generation methodologies are adapted for the empirical estimation. The results show the stimulating role of renewable energy consumption in shaping environmental quality. Education declines carbon emissions. Natural resource abundance and foreign direct investment deteriorate environmental quality. Moreover, the time series individual country analysis also confirms that renewable energy has a positive impact on economic growth. The heterogeneous causality analysis reveals the feedback effect, i.e., bidirectional causal associations among carbon emissions, education, and renewable energy consumption. This empirical evidence suggests that countries should increase investment in education and renewable energy sectors and plan for research and development in renewable energy for ensuring environmental sustainability.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6f70da79022e6aab11d8e5f91efe6d748f4a7df3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

In Environmental Engineering

In Pollution

Citations in the corpus

Assessing the impacts of ageing and natural resource extraction on carbon emissions: A proposed policy framework for European economies (2021, background): “13 people-public-private partnerships as the building blocks of a sustainable development process (Zafar et al. 2020).”
The role of information and communication technology in encountering environmental degradation: Proposing an SDG framework for the BRICS countries (2021, background): “9 based innovations should be complemented by bringing forth additional developmental catalysis in the prevailing economic growth trajectory, and this catalysis needs to be in the form of providing financial assistance to the domestic sector, so that they can be equipped with the newly developed inn”
Impact of technological innovation on energy efficiency in industry 4.0 era: Moderation of shadow economy in sustainable development (2021, background): “In order to fulfill this initiative, policymakers need to make amendments to the educational curriculum, so that the knowledge and awareness about environmental benefits of clean energy and energy efficiency can be achieved at the grassroots level (Paramati et al., 2017; Zafar et al., 2020).”
Natural resources abundance, economic globalization, and carbon emissions: Advancing sustainable development agenda (2021, background): “This outcome is consistent with other studies addressing APEC economies (Zaidi et al., 2019) and Asian economies (Zafar et al., 2020).”
Energy Transition in Poland—Assessment of the Renewable Energy Sector (2021, background): “In addition, experts have outlined the need to expand an educational offer for people who intend to work in the RE industry [87].”