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The increase in consumption and the increase in the use of resources linked to increasing human activity puts both energy security and sustainability at risk, which has led to a global restructuring of the policy agenda to ensure and integrate environmental well-being through channels such as energy efficiency (EE). Bearing this in mind, the objective of this research is to analyze the relationship between energy efficiency, renewable energy and financial development? For this reason, an analysis is conducted, which includes energy intensity measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per unit of energy use as a measure of efficiency for 43 European countries (period 1990–2019). The objective is to observewhether the use of renewable energy and the investments being made are driving economies towards higher EE and sustainable economic growth. The present study leverages on spatial econometrics models, which allow for the analysis of spillovers between economies. The results obtained allow us to observe the existence of spatial autocorrelation of EE between countries in Europe. Secondly, it is observed that the use of renewable energies promotes EE in neighbouring economies, as well as in the return effect. On the other hand, financial development shows that only the institutional component favours EE by generating a return effect on the economy itself, while the stock market component deteriorates the EE of neighbouring economies and on the same economy. Therefore, the analyzed data shows that the use of renewable energies promotes the improvement of EE and that being close to countries that replace the use of traditional energies with alternative sources has a positive effect on national EE. These mechanisms would allow policy makers to develop mechanisms for greener and more sustainable development, while encouraging efficient energy use. • The indirect effects of the nexus of renewable energy and financial development on energy efficiency for the EU bloc are explored. • The present study explores the use of robust Spatial Durbin Model (SDM). • Renewable energies promote energy efficiency in neighbouring economies. • Financial development shows that only the institutional component favours energy efficiency. • Green growth policies should be pursued in EU bloc energy mix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, empirical studies revealed that democracy is positively associated with environmental quality through the freedom gained by the people to demand environmental protection. In this paper, we explore empirical evidence linking how environmental performance interacts with democracy to influence tourism demand in twenty-seven European countries. To achieve this objective, we use the method of moments quantile regression (MMQR) model by Machado and Silva (J Econ 213: 145-173, 2019) and a balanced panel data covering the period 2002 to 2014. The empirical results suggest that environmental performance interacts heterogenously with democracy at different quantiles of the conditional distribution to stimulate tourism demand. Also, the effect of an increase in income and environmental performance is stronger in countries with lower tourism market shares than in countries with higher tourism market shares. The major implication for this study is that countries with lesser shares of the tourism market should strive for higher environmental performance and economic development as this would grant them more advantage in the tourism sector than their counterparts with higher market shares.

In recent times, there has been increase in climate change protest across the globe. However, whether decrease in emissions is connected with climate change protest or not is yet to be documented in the literature. Consequently, the aim of this study is to fill this gap by examining ex-post detection of how climate change protests and its interconnectedness with CO2 emissions. Using the Bai and Perron (1998) structural break test, we estimate the number of breaks as well as the date of such structural breaks in CO2 emissions series for 41 countries. Our aim is to match the date of the climate change protests to those of the structural breaks. We observe that climate change protests are fairly consistent with the dates of breaks in Europe and Asia, but not in BRICS economies or US, Canada and other countries. Therefore, this method allows us to solve a gap in the energy industry related to the modelling and correct allocation of positive shocks in CO2 emissions to climate change protests., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)