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The ambitious goal of the European Union (EU) countries is to achieve carbon neutrality by providing inclusive economic growth, which requires the development of relevant incentives and initiatives. Furthermore, such incentives and initiatives should guarantee the achievement of the declared goals. Energy sectors are the core determinant of inclusive economic growth. Traditional energy resources (coal oriented) have a higher negative impact on nature and people's well-being than on economic and social benefits. However, the transition to renewable energy raises new issues in achieving goals of inclusive economic growth: affordable and clean energy, responsible energy consumption, and energy infrastructure. The analysis of the theoretical framework found that the digitalization of government could be a core instrument for handling the abovementioned issues. The paper aims to justify the role of green energy in achieving inclusive economic growth empirically. The study applies the following methods: fully modified Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and canonical cointegrating regression. The findings allow concluding that institutional quality passively affects inclusive economic growth and that the digitalization of government has a U-shaped impact on inclusive economic growth. In this case, countries should boost the digital transformation of public services and continuously increase the quality of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy sources (RES) play a key role in achieving the European Union's energy and climate objectives. As a member of the European Union, Croatia has committed to adopting European Directive 2009/28/EC, a directive on promoting the use of RES. Croatia shows good potential for the use of different types of RES. In the period 2009–2019, the share of renewable energy in energy consumption increased from 23.6 to 28.5 percent. The Croatian energy strategy aims to increase the national share of renewable energy to at least 32 percent by 2030. Acceptance and public support are essential for renewable energy to be introduced into energy policy and particularly to encourage renewable energy implementation in the residential sector. The purpose of the paper is to explore the public perception of renewable energy and citizens' willingness to pay for the use of RES. Data were collected through a 2021 survey of citizens 18 years and older. The survey results show a low level of implementation of RES technology in the residential sector; more than 80 percent of respondents did not use any sources of renewable energy in their households. Results related to respondents' knowledge of different sources of renewable energy suggest they have the most knowledge of solar, wind, and hydropower energy. Respondents believe that combating climate change, reducing dependency on energy imports, reducing environmental impacts, and improving health are the most important benefits of RES implementation. The survey reveals general support for RES among respondents; almost 89 percent of them would purchase renewable energy from local suppliers. In addition, 79 percent of survey participants were willing to pay for the introduction of RES technology into their households. The research shows that environmental concerns are the primary reason for citizens' higher willingness to pay for RES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the relationships between economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. GDP growth represents the main economic dimension, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and renewable energy consumption the environmental dimension, and corruption the social dimension of sustainable development. The investigation of these relationships is based on the concept of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis about the non-linear relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution. The authors used the panel data of EU countries and Ukraine for 2000–2016 years from the Eurostat database. The obtained results confirmed the Environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for the EU and Ukraine. All the indicators were statistically significant at 1% and 5% levels. The findings proved that increasing renewable energy (RE) by 1% led to a decline of GHG in the interval (0.166103, 0.220551), and аn increase of the Control of Corruption Index by 1% provoked a decline of GHG by 0.88%. The conducted study enabled the authors to conclude that Ukraine needs to increase the GDP level per capita given the economy diversification and via the introduction of more effective and "clean" production technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]