Energizing environmental sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa: the role of governance quality in mitigating the environmental impact of energy poverty.

The Sub-Saharan Africa region is disproportionately affected by energy poverty and is considered highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Therefore, addressing the pressing challenges of energy poverty and promoting environmental sustainability in this region is of paramount importance. Consequently, this study appraises the relationship between energy poverty and ecological preservation in Sub-Saharan Africa from 2005 to 2020, using government effectiveness and regulatory quality as moderating variables. A combination of energy poverty indicators and an index of energy poverty computed via the principal component analysis method were applied to identify the link between energy poverty and ecological sustainability. The instrumental variable generalized method of moment technique was applied to address the likelihood of endogeneity issues, and the Driscoll-Kraay approach was employed to check the consistency of the instrumental variable generalized method of moment method. Key findings indicate that energy poverty expands the ecological footprint in Sub-Saharan Africa, leading to ecological deterioration, while the interaction with government effectiveness and regulatory quality further deteriorates the environment. Subsequently, the study provides several recommendations to mitigate the influence of energy poverty on the environment.

Sustainability challenges in Peru: embossing the role of economic integration and financial development-application of novel dynamic ARDL simulation.

Inspired by the commitment to address the environmental challenges in Peru under the UN Sustainable Development Goals 13 (Climate Action) and its implications by 2030, therefore, this study investigates the combined role of economic globalization, financial development, and fossil fuel intensity consumption using a combination of dynamic ARDL counterfactual simulation and kernel-based regularized least squares within the context of Stochastic Impact by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology over the period 1971-2017. This research output confirms the inverted-U-shaped hypothesis between economic growth and carbon emissions. In contrast, the kernel-based regularized least squares confirms the scale effect and fossil curse hypothesis in the relationship between financial development and carbon emission, and heterogeneous effects in economic integration and carbon emission. We further document that financial development, fossil fuel consumption, urban population, affluence (economic growth), and government final consumption expenditure spur environmental pollution while economic integration reduces it. This study recommends Peru to instill environmental justice through regulations and policies restricting inflows into an exploration of environmentally unsustainable projects within Peruvian metropolises or in the Peruvian Amazon. There is a need to revisit finance and investment laws and increase investment in low-carbon infrastructure within Peru.

Economic expansion, energy sources and environmental quality in ECOWAS sub-region: evidence from a heterogeneous panel non-linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (PNARDL).

The level of economic growth is critical in evaluating environmental quality energy source economic growth nexus. In recent empirical works, very little attention has been given to the role of sizes of economic expansion in relation to the Environmental Kuznets Hypothesis in a panel of countries. This study, therefore, investigates the asymmetric relationships between different income groups and energy sources on the one hand with environmental quality on the other. Deviating from previous studies, this present study adopts Panel Non-Linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (PNARDL) Model to a panel of 15 ECOWAS countries grouped into low-income and lower-middle-income countries. Results indicate that RGDP outcome for low-income nations support the EKC hypothesis when carbon footprint is used to proxy for environmental quality. Furthermore, EKC Hypothesis is also supported in lower-middle-income countries for RGDP when carbon footprint and carbon dioxide are used as proxy for environmental quality. We conclude that non-renewable energy use, harmful agricultural land practices, and unsustainable economic expansion matter so much in achieving environmental quality in the ECOWAS sub-region. Since it is considered that non-renewable energy among other energy sources influence economic activities the most, we recommend the use of renewable energy for ECOWAS sub-region in order to mitigate the damage done by fossil fuel and harmful agricultural practices in order to achieve sustainable growth and pollution-free environment.

Towards sustainability path in Argentina: the role of finance, energy mix, and industrial value-added in low or high carbon emission-application of DARDL simulation.

The interconnection between environmental protection and sustainable development is at the heart of discussion among all the intergovernmental agencies around the globe. Such discussion is considered highly important considering the role of finance, an abundance of fossil fuel and industrial value-added on economic activities and environmental issues. Meanwhile, few empirical studies in this line of discussions have documented policy options for projecting the path towards sustainable development in Argentina from 1971 to 2018. To contribute to the extant literature in filling this gap, this study examines whether finance can escalate a long-lasting economic shift that will change the path of carbon emission in Argentina using the novel econometric technique, dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag simulations. The modelling protocol incorporates the impact of the following economic agents such as population, economic growth, trade openness, and government consumption expenditure. Our result suggests that all the variables are cointegrated under the ARDL-bounds testing framework. The long and short-term estimates from the dynamic ARDL simulation show that finance and industrial value added interestingly offer policy options for CO2 mitigation in Argentina. Fossil fuel, population, economic growth, and government consumption expenditure have increasing an impact on CO2 emissions, exacerbating sustainability challenges in Argentina. In sum, improved finance and industrial restructuring are needed economic acumen that can accelerate a quick transition to a low-carbon development in Argentina, while fossil fuel, population, economic growth, and government consumption expenditure generate environmental challenges. Policy options in consideration of investors' safety in carbonated companies in Argentina, these companies owe shareholders an obligation to invest in a resilient carbon capture and storage technology in a bid to decrease environmental degradation and align with environmental goals set by the Argentine government.