The road to decarbonization in Australia. A Morlet wavelet approach.

The path toward sustainable development is closely related to the intensification of renewable energy sources and the continual innovation of technologies. To evaluate the role of renewable energy consumption and technological innovations on carbon emissions in Australia, this study uses the Morlet wavelet approach. This study identified temporal and frequency variations by applying wavelet correlation, continuous wavelet transforms, and partial and multiple wavelet coherence methods on data from 2000 to 2021. The wavelet correlation revealed that non-renewable energy, globalization, and economic growth are positively correlated with carbon emissions at all scales. In contrast, carbon emissions are negatively correlated with renewable energy and technological innovation at all scales. Meanwhile, the wavelet coherence analysis shows that non-renewable energy contributes to increased CO2 emissions from the short to long term, whereas renewable energy usage negatively affects CO2 emissions across all frequency scales. The study findings indicate that increasing the proportion of renewable energy usage in the total energy mix will curb CO2 emissions over the long run. Accordingly, the way to achieve sustainable development is shifting to a low-carbon economy centered on renewable energy sources, enhancing energy efficiency, and using carbon storage and capture technologies.

Residential energy expenditures and the relevance of financial inclusion across location, wealth quintiles and household structures.

This paper examines the relative role of financial inclusion in enhancing households' ability to spend on energy consumption across rural and urban locations. It uses comprehensive household data from Ghana and employs the ordinary least square (OLS) as well as an instrumental variable estimation technique. Endogeneity of financial inclusion is instrumented using distance to the nearest bank. Our findings suggest that a standard deviation increase in financial inclusion contributes to an improvement in residential energy expenditure by 1.2835 standard deviations. This finding is robust to different methods for resolving endogeneity and alternative weighting schemes in the financial inclusion construct. Among the different sources of energy for lighting and cooking, financial inclusion increases expenditure on LPG and electricity more than the others. Financial inclusion increases the ability to spend more on residential energy in urban, poorest, and female-headed dual-parent households. Household net income is a key pathway through which financial inclusion affects residential energy expenditure.

Urban climate adaptability and green total-factor productivity: Evidence from double dual machine learning and differences-in-differences techniques.

Climate change has increasingly become a significant challenge to sustainable socio-economic development, and climate adaptation is a key issue that relevant research focuses on regional sustainable development models. By employing panel data between 2007 and 2020 from 284 Chinese prefecture-level cities, this study adopts quasi-experimental methods, including a difference-in-differences design and double dual machine learning model, to study the impact of climate adaptability on green regional sustainable development. Empirical results confirm that the pilot policy of building climate-resilient cities significantly improves urban green total-factor productivity. Difference-in-difference models (derived from entropy-weight and propensity score matching) and double dual learning models also support the improving effect of regional green total-factor productivity after policy intervention. The digital economy has strengthened the green development effect of pilot policies for building climate-adaptive cities. In addition, policy interventions to build climate-adaptive cities promote green urban development by optimizing industrial development structures and enhancing economic growth resilience. In addition, climate adaptability can also attract highly skilled talent and high-quality enterprises, facilitate science and technological progress in urban areas, and thus promoting the green development of cities in China. This study objectively evaluates the effects of climate policies and provides insights for global adaptation to climate change and optimization of public policies.

Energy justice, democracy and deforestation.

This paper contributes to the debate on the determinants of deforestation, a menace that is posing threat to sustainable development particularly in tropical developing regions. Specifically, the paper focuses on the effect of energy justice and democratization. The main contribution to the literature hinges on the emphasis on energy justice - operationalized as rural-urban equality in access to electricity and clean fuels and technologies for cooking - and its interaction with democracy. Using a panel data of 47 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2000-2020 and the dynamic two-step generalized method of moment estimator, the results generally indicate that improvement in rural-urban equality in access to electricity and clean fuels and technologies for cooking is associated with a reduction in deforestation. Democracy is similarly found to be associated with reduction in deforestation. The conditional effect analysis largely depicts an intensified reducing effect of energy justice on deforestation in the presence of improved democratic practices. The results though robust to an alternative estimator, the Driscoll-Kraay estimator, differ when sub-regional analysis is considered. The paper aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goals 7, 13, 15 and 16.

Modelling the globalization-CO2 emission nexus in Australia: evidence from quantile-on-quantile approach.

Sustainable development policies for achieving net-zero emissions require understanding the factors that influence carbon emissions. Capitalizing on the limitations of the existing literature, this study applies the quantile-on-quantile approach to investigate economic globalization's impact on carbon emissions in Australia for 1970-2018. The results from the quantile-on-quantile revealed a positive feedback linkage between globalization and carbon emissions at all quantiles. The results further indicated that while there is a positive feedback linkage between economic growth and carbon emissions at most quantiles, a positive feedback interconnection exists between carbon emissions and coal consumption at all quantiles. As a robustness check, we employed the quantile regression test, and the results from quantile regression are consistent with the findings from the quantile-on-quantile approach. The consistency of the results suggests that these study findings are reliable and suitable for informing policies that seek to address carbon emissions in Australia. The policy implications for Australia are discussed.

Policy Stringency, Handwashing and COVID-19 cases: Evidence from Global dataset.

Objective: : Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments globally have introduced policy measures to contain the spread of the virus. Popular COVID-19 containment measures include lockdowns of various forms (aggregated into government response stringency index [GRSI]) and handwashing (HWF). The effectiveness of these policy measures remains unclear in the academic literature. This study, therefore, examines the effect of government policy stringency and handwashing on total daily reported COVID-19 cases. Method: : We use a comprehensive dataset of 176 countries to investigate the effect of government policy stringency and handwashing on daily reported COVID-19 cases. In this study, we apply the Lewbel (2012) two-stage least squares technique to control endogeneity. Results: : Our results indicated that GRSI significantly contributes to the increase in the total and new confirmed cases of COVI-19. Sensitivity analyses revealed that the 1st, 4th, and 5th quintiles of GRIS significantly reduce total confirmed cases of COVID-19. Also, the result indicated that while the 1st quintile of GRIS contributes significantly to reducing the new confirmed cases of COVID-19, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th quintiles of GRSI contribute significantly to increasing the new confirmed cases of COVID-19. The results indicated that HWF reduces total and new confirmed cases of COVID-19; however, such effect is not robust to income and regional effects. Nonlinear analysis revealed that while GRSI has an inverted U-shaped relationship with total and new confirmed cases of COVID-19, HWF has a U-shaped relationship. Conclusion: : We suggest that policymakers should focus on raising awareness and full engagement of all members of society in implementing public health policies rather than using stringent lockdown measures.

Does insurance sector development improve environmental quality? Evidence from BRICS.

The effect of financial development measured by banks, bonds, and stocks on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2E) has been widely studied while not much is known about the effect of the insurance sector development on CO2E. Thus, this study fills this void by estimating the effect of insurance consumption on CO2E for BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) from 2000 to 2016 using the instrumental variable generalized method of moments model. The findings indicate that, generally, insurance sector development spurs CO2E in BRICS. Specifically, a 10% rise in life insurance development increases BRICS CO2E by 1%. Also, a 10% rise in non-life insurance development increases BRICS CO2E by 4%. Finally, a 10% rise in the composite insurance development index increases BRICS CO2E by 2%. The study further finds that population size, trade openness, and energy consumption drive CO2E in BRICS, while economic growth mitigates CO2E. These results were robust to alternative econometric estimators, and alternative CO2E proxy. Policies that promote green insurance consumption are recommended.

Transport energy consumption and environmental quality: Does urbanization matter?

Previous studies on environmental quality have emphasized the importance of transportation and urbanization in influencing carbon emission globally. While the theoretical and empirical discussions remain inconclusive and controversial, the question of whether transport energy consumption and urbanization induce emissions of carbon dioxide in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains unclear. This study contributes to the ensuing debate on sustainable transportation and urban development, focusing on the link between transport energy consumption, urbanization and carbon emissions in 19 SSA countries over 31 years (1980-2011). Using the IV-GMM estimator that accounts for endogeneity and cross-sectional dependence inherent in panel dataset, three key findings emerge from the study. First, we find substantial evidence that CO2 emission increases with transport energy consumption and decreases with urbanization. Second, factors such as electricity consumption and population growth rate worsen CO2 emission, whereas regulatory quality and FDI significantly reduce carbon emission in the region. Third, the predicted effect of urbanization and transport energy consumption on CO2 emission vary quite dramatically across SSA countries. We argue for drastic policies tailored towards reducing carbon emission in SSA.

Do globalization and renewable energy contribute to carbon emissions mitigation in Sub-Saharan Africa?

This study examines the impact of globalisation (measured in terms of foreign direct investment and trade openness), and renewable energy on carbon emissions using 46 sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1980-2015. Using fixed and random effect estimation techniques, the study found that renewable energy and foreign direct investment contribute to the reduction of carbon emissions while trade openness deteriorates the environment. It was also found that population growth and financial development contribute to the increase in carbon emissions. The study found evidence for Environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Our results revealed that institutional quality measured using regulation has a less pronounced effect for reducing carbon emissions. However, regulation moderates economic growth and foreign direct investment to reduce carbon emissions. These results are robust to alternative estimators such as the instrumental variable generalised method of moment and dynamic fixed effect estimators. The study further demonstrated that there are variations in the results among the regions within sub-Saharan Africa. The policy implications of the paper are discussed.