Exploring the Roles of Renewable Energy, Education Spending, and CO2 Emissions towards Health Spending in South Asian Countries

This research is mainly aimed at determining the effect of renewable energy (RE), education expenditures, and CO2 emissions on health expenditures in selected South Asian countries. There is an insufficient number of studies that investigate the linkages between health expenditures (HE) and CO2 emissions in South Asian countries. This study combined RE and gross domestic product (GDP) to identify their effect on health spending. We utilized the annual data of 1990–2018, and applied FMOLS and DOLS estimators over the panel data of five South Asian countries. According to the DOLS and FMOLS long-run results, GDP, RE, and education expenditures are negatively associated with health expenditures. This suggests that renewable energy puts less pressure on environmental quality, which leads to less health spending in the five South Asian countries studied. The empirical results also show that HE and CO2 emissions are positively and significantly related, which implies that an increase in CO2 emissions increases the financial burden on the various countries’ health sector. This study, therefore, recommends the usage of renewable sources to improve public health and to help lower health expenditures. To achieve sustainable development, it is also important to increase investment in the educational sector in the various countries.

A Critical Review of Renewable Hydrogen Production Methods: Factors Affecting Their Scale-Up and Its Role in Future Energy Generation.

An increase in human activities and population growth have significantly increased the world's energy demands. The major source of energy for the world today is from fossil fuels, which are polluting and degrading the environment due to the emission of greenhouse gases. Hydrogen is an identified efficient energy carrier and can be obtained through renewable and non-renewable sources. An overview of renewable sources of hydrogen production which focuses on water splitting (electrolysis, thermolysis, and photolysis) and biomass (biological and thermochemical) mechanisms is presented in this study. The limitations associated with these mechanisms are discussed. The study also looks at some critical factors that hinders the scaling up of the hydrogen economy globally. Key among these factors are issues relating to the absence of a value chain for clean hydrogen, storage and transportation of hydrogen, high cost of production, lack of international standards, and risks in investment. The study ends with some future research recommendations for researchers to help enhance the technical efficiencies of some production mechanisms, and policy direction to governments to reduce investment risks in the sector to scale the hydrogen economy up.