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In the preceding two decades, the expansion of financial services has played a vital role in pursuing economic growth agendas in the developing Asian nations. However, its harmful effect on environmental quality cannot be denied. In this backdrop, in the present study, we investigated whether the financial sector development moderated the ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and land footprint in the eight developing nations of South and Southeast Asia from 1990 to 2015. In doing so, we included the per capita income, energy solutions, and trade expansions as determinants of the ecological indicators. The results of the second-generation unit root tests and Westerlund's cointegration test reported the long-run stability and cointegration, respectively. To navigate the possible cross-country dependency, we employed the cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag approach (CS-ARDL). The results confirmed that per capita income, energy solutions, trade expansion, and financial sector development invigorated the ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and land footprint in the long run. Further, it is reported that the development in the financial sector has a significant moderating impact on the nexus between energy and environmental footprints. In other words, the financial sector development drove the association between the overall environmental quality and energy solutions in the long run. Similarly, we observed that the financial sector development worked as a significant mediator between environmental proxies and trade expansion. By including the ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and land footprint as environmental proxies, the study provides the wider environmental spectrum. Based on the outcomes of the study, we proposed a novel scheme, which may help to address the harmful environmental impacts of the financial sector development in the selected developing nations.

Increasing economic activities in developing economies raise demand for energy mainly sourced from conventional sources. The consumption of more conventional energy will have a significant negative impact on the environment. Therefore, attention of policy makers has recently shifted towards the promotion of renewable energy generation and uses across economic activities to ensure low carbon economy. Given the recent scenario, in this paper, we aim to examine the role of renewable energy consumption on the economic output and CO 2 emissions of the next fastest developing economies of the world. The study employs several robust panel econometric models by using annual data from 1990 to 2012. Empirical findings confirm the significant long-run association among the variables. Similarly, results show that renewable energy consumption positively contributes to economic output and has an adverse effect on CO 2 emissions. Given our findings, we suggest policy makers of those economies to initiate further effective policies to promote more renewable energy generation and uses across economic activities to ensure sustainable economic development.

The sluggish progress concerning SDG-9 and SDG 13 has made South Asia an epicentre of household and ambient greenhouse gases emissions. Furthermore, the regional progress concerning attainment of SDG-3 is considerably low. The major research objectives are twofold. First, to explore the impact of GHGs emissions from agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing sector on disaggregated life expectancy. Second, to examine the mitigating impact of renewable energy use, trade integration, and human capital development for practice policy recommendations. These research objectives are realized by employing recently advanced cross-sectional auto regressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) model on panel data of five South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka from 1990 to 2019. The estimation outcome reveals that the emissions from transportation, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors significantly deteriorate healthy life expectancy of male and female healthy life expectancy in South Asia with different intensity. Especially, we find that long-run impact of GHG is more profound on male healthy life expectancy than female life expectancy. The result further shows that renewable energy and human capital substantially improve healthy life expectancy, whereas the effects of trade integration are insignificant. The finding of moderating variables shows that renewable energy, human capital development, and trade integration have high potential to reduce GHGs emissions. The findings of this study urge South Asia for investments in human capital development and renewable energy along with fostering regional integration to decrease GHG and improve healthy life expectancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International tourism as a cause of global warming is a controversial and topical issue. Here, we use the novel Morlet Wavelet time–frequency approach to gain a deeper insight into the dynamic nexus between tourism, renewable energy utilization, energy utilization and carbon dioxide emissions for China using annual data over the era 1974–2016. The techniques we use include Continuous Wavelet power spectrum, the Wavelet Coherency, and the Partial and the Multiple Wavelet Coherence for time–frequency decomposition that can capture local oscillatory components in time series. Our findings support the hypothesis that tourism can cause increased energy utilization and carbon dioxide emissions in China, which challenges the sustainable tourism development goal. However, on the positive side, the relationship between tourism and renewable energy utilization is shown to facilitate reduced environmental degradation in the medium-long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature on environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is mainly focused on finding out the optimal sustainable path for any economy. Looking at the present renewable energy generation scenario in India, this study has made an attempt to estimate the EKC for CO 2 emission in India for the period of 1971–2015. Using unit root test with multiple structural breaks and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration, this study has found the evidence of inverted U-shaped EKC for India, with the turnaround point at USD 2937.77. The renewable energy has found to have significant negative impact on CO 2 emissions, whereas for overall energy consumption, the long run elasticity is found to be higher than short run elasticity. Moreover, trade is negatively linked with carbon emissions. Based on the results, this study concludes with suitable policy prescriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies regarding the economic growth-environmental pollution link have struggled to determine the effects of various forms of energy consumption on environmental degradation, particularly in the context of emerging economies. This study examines the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for CO 2 emissions in N-11 countries during 1990-2014 by segregating three forms of energy consumption (renewable, biomass and non-renewable). Urbanization and trade openness are additional explanatory variables that are used in the empirical framework. Using the Generalized Moments Method (GMM), the empirical evidence confirms the presence of an N-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation for N-11 countries. This study analyzed the interaction effects among trade openness, biomass consumption and economic growth; these interactions had a negative impact on CO 2 emissions levels of N-11 countries. Suitable policy recommendations have been provided based on the detailed results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study recommends the use of Theil's second measure to investigate international renewable energy generation disparities. This index permits disparities to be broken down within and between groups of countries in a reliable style. An analysis of OECD countries for 1980–2011 shows some basic points: first, drop in renewable energy generation disparities is attributable both to within-group and between-group inequality components; second, between-group inequalities are presently the key contributor to the inequality; and, further investigation on within-group inequalities divulges the significant explanatory role played by North American, European, and Asian and Oceanian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic and demographic transitions led by the persistent increase in the per capita income have challenged the environmental conservation drive in most of the developing nations. Therefore, in recent years, policymakers emphasized the need for navigating the harmful impacts of economic growth endeavors on the established ecosystem. In this regard, the widespread usage of renewable energy solutions has helped in restoring the environmental quality in both developed and developing countries. Keeping this in mind, in the present study, we examined the long run and short-run impacts of per capita income, renewable energy, life expectancy, and population density on the ecological footprint in the eight developing countries of South and Southeast Asia from 1990 to 2015. In the selected nations, these variables appear to be the potential drivers of the ecological footprint. To calculate the common coefficients, we have employed the cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) approach, as this approach handles the cross-sectional dependency issue efficiently and provides the short-run and long-run coefficients. The long-run results supported the need for low pollution-intense energy resources because the association between per capita income and ecological footprint is found N-shaped. Further, the study established that the increased use of renewable energy has significantly reduced the ecological footprint in the region. However, the increased population density has led to an increase in pollution emissions in these countries. Similarly, the impact of life expectancy on the ecological footprint is found positive but insignificant. Based on the findings, a multipronged policy framework has been designed, so that these nations can attain the objectives of certain sustainable development goals (SDGs). Determining the factors influencing ecological footprint in emerging economies of Asia (1990–2015). Notes: (- sig.) = negative and significant, (+sig.) = positive and significant, and (+insig.) = positive and insignificant. Image 1 • In relation to the ecological footprint, the study confirms the N-shaped EKC. • Renewable energy consumption contributes to improve environmental quality in the long run. • 1% increase in population density widens the scope for ecological footprint by 0.139%. • Impact of life expectancy on ecological footprint has remained positive but insignificant during the study period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We re-investigate the impact of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption on Turkey's ecological footprint. • This study applies Quantile Autoregressive Lagged approach for the period of 1965Q1-2017Q4. • Renewable energy decrease ecological footprint in long-run on each quantile. • The results of QARDL confirmed the EKC in Turkey. • There is a bi-directional causal relationship between renewable energy consumption, energy consumption and economic growth with ecological footprint. The current study re-investigates the impact of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption on Turkey's ecological footprint. This study applies Quantile Autoregressive Lagged (QARDL) approach for the period of 1965Q1-2017Q4. We further apply Granger-causality in Quantiles to check the causal relationship among the variables. The results of QARDL show that error correction parameter is statistically significant with the expected negative sign for all quantiles which confirm an existence of significant reversion to the long-term equilibrium connection between the related variables and ecological footprint in Turkey. In particular, the outcomes suggested that renewable energy decrease ecological footprint in long-run on each quantile. However, the results of economic growth and non-renewable energy impact positively to ecological footprint in long-short run period at all quantiles. Finally, we tested the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis and the results of QARDL confirmed the EKC in Turkey. Furthermore, the findings of causal investigation from Granger- causality in quantiles evident the presence of a bi-directional causal relationship between renewable energy consumption, energy consumption and economic growth with ecological footprint in the Turkish economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine the validity of Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis for ecological footprint with the role of renewable energy use, non-renewable energy use and trade openness in 24 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. For this purpose, we investigate the period from 1980 to 2014 using with second generation panel data methodologies which allow to cross-sectional dependence among countries. The group-mean results show that the inverted U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis does not hold in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries because we found the U-shaped relationship between economic growth and ecological footprint. In addition, it is concluded that increasing renewable energy consumption reduces ecological footprint and increasing non-renewable energy consumption increases environmental degradation. Image 10447 • We examine the validity of Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis for ecological footprint. • Renewable and non-renewable energy use and trade openness are explanatory variables. • Study is done for 24 OECD countries from 1980 to 2014. • Results show that the EKC hypothesis does not hold. • Renewable energy consumption reduces ecological footprint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This examination explored the link between renewable energy utilization and environmental degradation in top-10 polluted countries by using monthly data from 1990 to 2017. The Quantile-on-Quantile regression (QQ) proposed by Sim and Zhou [1] and Granger causality in quantiles developed by Troster [2] are applied. In particular, we examine in what manners, quantiles of renewable energy consumption affect the quantiles of environmental degradation. Our empirical findings unfold overall dependence between renewable energy consumption and ecological deterioration. The findings recommend the presence of a significant negative association between renewable energy consumption and environmental degradation in China, USA, Japan, Canada, Brazil, South Korea and Germany, predominantly in high and low tails but results are totally contrasting in the case of India, Russia and Indonesia. Furthermore, the outcomes of Granger-causality in quantiles conclude a bidirectional causal link between renewable energy consumption and environmental degradation. The empirical findings suggest that governments should need to subsidize green energy in declining ecological degradation. • We analyze the link between renewable energy utilization and environmental degradation. • Study is done on top-10 polluted countries by using monthly data from 1990 to 2017. • Advanced quantile modeling is adopted. • Bidirectional causality found between renewable energy utilization and environmental degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of green finance on environmental performance in developing countries. Using panel cointegration analysis and panel vector error correction model (VECM) to a sample of 76 developing economies from 2010 to 2019, this study confirms that carbon emissions (CO 2) is cointegrated with green finance, real gross domestic product, urbanization, and renewable energy under different specifications and therefore we estimate the long-run relationships among these variables. Specifically, both green finance and renewable energy are found to exert significant and inhibitory effects on CO 2 emissions, reaffirming the necessity to promote green finance and renewable energy. Results from the paper also document the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve and the increasing effects of urbanization on CO 2 emissions. Several policy implications and recommendations are drawn from this study. • We examine impact of green finance on environmental performance. • 76 developing economies from 2010 to 2019 are considered. • Green finance and renewable energy exert inhibitory effects on CO 2 emissions. • Results support the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belt and Road (BRI) countries are trying to realize the potential of financial resources and renewable energy in order to mitigate the effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, prevailing structural issues have been found to stymie the environmental outcome. This issue calls for a policy reorientation in the BRI countries, and therein lies the role of the present study. This study examines how the environmental impacts of financial development and renewable energy respond to exogenous moderation. Using a second-generation methodological approach on the data of the 64 BRI countries over 2003–2019, findings reveal that globalization enhances the negative environmental externality exerted by financial development, while institutional quality suppresses it. Both globalization and institutional quality augment the positive environmental externalities exerted by renewable energy and human capital. Using dynamic elasticity measures, the evolutionary impacts of the moderators are also captured. An SDG-oriented policy framework is recommended based on the study outcomes. [Display omitted] • Environmental impact of financial development and renewable energy is analyzed. • Second generation method is applied. • Dynamic elasticity analysis is applied. • Policy framework is designed to address SDG 7 and 13. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing size of stock market in the South Asian countries might have contributed to raising the level of industrial production and energy consumption. This upturned energy usage might have widened the scope for carbon emissions because these nations heavily rely on fossil fuels. In this milieu, therefore, in the present study, we assessed the impacts of stock market development, per capita income, trade expansion, renewable energy solutions, and technological innovations on carbon intensity in the four South Asia countries from 1990 to 2016. The empirical results based on the CS-ARDL approach revealed that stock market development, per capita income, and trade expansion invigorated carbon intensity in the South Asian countries. On the contrary, the increased usage of renewable energy solutions and technological advancement helped in reducing the energy-led carbon intensity. Further, the interaction of stock market with renewable energy, and subsequently with technological advancement delivered insignificant coefficients, which indicates the inefficacy of renewable energy and technological advancement in regulating stock market-led carbon intensity during the study period. Therefore, by considering the need for complementarity between economic growth and environmental targets, we proposed a multipronged policy framework, which may help the selected countries to attain the Sustainable Development Goals, with a special focus on SDG 7, 8, 9, and 13. The proposed scheme to reduce carbon intensity. [Display omitted] • Stock market development contributes to raising energy-led carbon intensity. • Per capita income and trade openness intensify carbon intensity. • Renewable energy and technological innovation fortify environmental quality. • Renewable energy and technological innovation unable to regulate stock market-led carbon intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. Image 1 • This study analyzes the impact of educational attainment on carbon emissions. • Study has been done for 27 OECD countries over the period of 1990–2015. • Results show stimulating role of educational attainment in shaping environmental quality. • Natural resource abundance and FDI deteriorates environmental quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This study disaggregates energy, i.e. non-renewable and renewable energy consumption, and investigates its effect on economic growth. The period of 1990–2015 is used to examine Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries. This paper determines the cross-sectional dependence and employs a second-generation panel unit root test for precise estimation. Westerlund cointegration test is used to examine the long-run equilibrium relationship between the variables and confirm the presence of cointegration in the long run. The Continuously Updated Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (CUP-FM) approaches are applied to investigate long-term output elasticities between the variables. The results show the stimulating role of energy (renewable and nonrenewable) consumption in economic growth. Research and development expenditures and trade openness have a positive effect on economic growth. Moreover, the time series individual country analysis also confirms that renewable energy has a positive impact on economic growth. The heterogenous causality analysis reveals the feedback effect, i.e., bidirectional causal associations among economic growth, renewable energy consumption, and nonrenewable energy consumption. This empirical evidence suggests that countries should increase investment in renewable energy sectors and plan for development in renewable energy for sustainable energy growth. Graphical abstract Image 1086374 Highlights • We analyze the growth-energy-capital-trade-R&D expenditures association. • Study is done for 16 in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries during the period of 1990–2015. • Long-run output elasticities are estimated for panel and individual countries. • Energy consumption in any form increases economic growth. • Research and Development expenditure increases economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]