• Energy Research

The endeavor to implement the 2030 Agenda of national and international stakeholders became increasingly impetuous, considering the wide range of uncertainties and risks. The new humans-centered development model built on the prominence of environmental and social values seeks to reinforce communities' resilience and mitigate environmental risks, leaving no one behind. For this to happen, solid and effective institutions, the right environmental policies, and a safe statutory labor framework are the sine qua non. In this study, we evaluated the effects of informality, institutional quality, and renewable energy consumption on ecological footprint of two groups of emerging countries from Europe and Asia from 2002 to 2018. Our results by PMG-ARDL approach highlight dissimilarities between the two groups, showing greater heterogeneity. In this sense, informality is found to have positive and significant effects on ecological footprint in the long run in emerging European countries. In contrast, the effect is negative for emerging Asian countries. In the short run, the effects are less critical in the studied countries between the two groups. Institutional quality variables impacted environmental quality differently. In this sense, it is detrimental for policymakers to consider concerted measures to decrease institutional vulnerabilities and reduce the level of the informal economy. The outcome of this study concurs with a complete awareness of the importance of informality and institutional quality to mitigate social and environmental risks conjunctively.

A country's financing system is essential in addressing sustainable development requirements. National sources and international financial flows contribute to economic growth and environmental quality in many ways, and their impact can be critical. This paper applied panel data analysis using a comparative approach of Pooled Mean Group Auto Regressive Distribute Lags (PMG-ARDL) and Cross Sectionally ARDL (CS-ARDL) to estimate the effects of FDI, renewable energy, and remittance on environmental quality in the top remittance-receiving countries, during 2000-2021. The study emphasized the positive relationship between FDI and carbon emissions. Moreover, renewable energy and remittances revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship with carbon emissions. In the case of developing countries from the panel, remittance improves environmental quality after reaching the threshold. Moreover, for some of the developing countries included in the panel, we found that they do not achieve the desired carbon mitigation effect in their early stages of renewable energy implementation. However, renewable energy becomes a key factor for tackling environmental pollution after a certain threshold. The mixed results determined diverse policy recommendations for various stakeholders.

Worldwide, environmental sustainability is a hot topic, particularly in industrialized countries due to their higher emission intensity. Environmental conservation and equitable economic growth have been prioritized in economic debate and policy development. Over the past three decades, the USA's emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2e) have risen exponentially, as trade policy uncertainty (TPU). In this circumstance, this paper aims to contribute to the existing literature by exploring the effect of TPU on environmental quality by controlling the energy consumption, economic growth, and population in the USA over the period 1985M1 to 2022M3 employing the augmented ARDL and NARDL procedures in the presence of structural breaks. From our analysis, the results revealed that TPU affects negatively CO2e in the residential sector, and negative changes in TPU positively affect CO2e in the commercial sector both in the long and short run. On the other side, the outcomes show that energy consumption is a crucial key determinant factor in environmental degradation at the aggregate level and in all sectors. Furthermore, our findings clarify that economic growth upsurges the CO2e at the aggregate level precisely in the industrial and residential sectors. Juxtaposing, in the long run, the results indicate that population growth could make additional pressure on environmental quality at the aggregate level, especially in commercial, power generation, and residential sectors. Accordingly, it is clear from our results that the regulations put in place to encourage Americans to buy locally created goods instead of those imported, especially in light of the high levels of TPU, maybe the best option to decrease the long-term impact of international trade on the environment to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs).

This paper explores the influence of economic policy uncertainty on environmental quality in selected MENA countries depending on an augmented STIRPAT model over the period 1970-2020. ARDL model and its extensions like augmented ARDL, augmented NARDL, and MTNARDL models are applied to detect any possible effect from uncertainty index to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The empirical results reveal the validity of environmental Kuznet curve (EKC) curve in all the countries. Moreover, the results show that the uncertainty index enhances environmental degradation, especially in extremely large changes in Morocco, Turkey, and Iran. Besides, the findings reveal that energy consumption and population in the entire sample escalates CO2 emissions over the study period. Consequently, policymakers in MENA countries should consider the economic uncertainty index, particularly in light of its recent rise, when developing any strategies and plans aimed at improving environmental standards, as well as the need to encourage the use of renewable energies in order to increase the percentage of their contribution to total energy consumption.

This paper introduces a novel approach to explore marine ecosystem by examining the Fishing Grounds Load Capacity Curve (FGLCC) hypothesis. The study investigates the impact of income on the marine condition in G7 nations from 1970 to 2019 by exploring the U-shaped relationship between income and the Fishing Grounds Load Capacity Factor (FGLCF). This research diverges from previous studies focused solely on the demand side through fishing footprints, as it considers the neglected aspect of the marine supply side. Furthermore, it explores the influence of renewable energies and human capital as indicators inversely related to non-renewable energy use and population on the marine condition. The findings reveal the U-shaped FGLCC hypothesis. Additionally, the results demonstrate that renewable energies and human capital have a positive impact on the marine ecosystem. These outcomes provide valuable insights for decision-makers, enabling them to identify key variables that contribute to the preservation of marine diversity.

Environmental quality and climate change have become hot topics among academics in all scientific fields in recent decades due to their impact on human health and economic development. Hence, this paper investigates the key factors of carbon dioxide emissions in India from 1970–2020 through the Bayer-Hanck test and Augmented ARDL framework on an augmented STIRPAT model, introducing uncertainty and globalization. We employ a set of unit-root tests and a combination of cointegration techniques (DOLS and FMOLS), which permit us to estimate the long-run and short-run relationships. Empirical findings confirmed that the series is I(1) series and there is the existence of a long-run relationship between our variables using three cointegration tests, meaning that the variables have the same behavior in the long run term. The findings revealed that India has an inverse U shape of the Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) due to the positive association between GDP per capita and CO2 emissions until reaching a threshold, after which the link becomes inverse due to the negative impact of GDP square on CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated a positive influence of uncertainty and a negative impact of globalization on long-term environmental degradation. Besides, energy consumption and population density are positively associated with CO2 emissions in the long and short run. We advocate for policies that promote more trade openness by entering new markets and cooperating with new trading partners.