Renewable Energy and Economic Growth

Author(s):  
Patrizio Morganti ◽  
Giuseppe Garofalo

The global commitment to drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions towards a sustainable development is strongly connected to the development and usage of renewable energy (RE), such as solar and wind. Between 2006 and 2016, world's total RE consumption, excluding hydro-electricity, increased by almost 350%, and RE investment grew from US $47 billion in 2004 to 279.8 billion in 2017. The importance of RE has attracted a lot of attention from the economic literature as well, since a growing body of empirical research is investigating the relationships between RE and economic growth. The general outcome is the existence of a positive bi-directional (direct and reverse) link between RE consumption and real GDP, though it also emerges evidence showing no statistically significant relationship. This Chapter provides i) an overview of the recent world's trends of RE production and investment, ii) an extensive and detailed review of the recent advances in the RE-growth empirical literature, highlighting the main methodologies adopted and the main findings emerged.

Author(s):  
Patrizio Morganti ◽  
Giuseppe Garofalo

The global commitment to drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions towards a sustainable development is strongly connected to the development and usage of renewable energy (RE), such as solar and wind. Between 2006 and 2016, world's total RE consumption, excluding hydro-electricity, increased by almost 350%, and RE investment grew from US $47 billion in 2004 to 279.8 billion in 2017. The importance of RE has attracted a lot of attention from the economic literature as well, since a growing body of empirical research is investigating the relationships between RE and economic growth. The general outcome is the existence of a positive bi-directional (direct and reverse) link between RE consumption and real GDP, though it also emerges evidence showing no statistically significant relationship. This Chapter provides i) an overview of the recent world's trends of RE production and investment, ii) an extensive and detailed review of the recent advances in the RE-growth empirical literature, highlighting the main methodologies adopted and the main findings emerged.


Author(s):  
Jorge Tenório Fernando ◽  
Sergio Ricardo Siani

A renewable energy matrix plays a fundamental role in providing energy services ina sustainable platform and, particularly, to reduce climate change on a global basis. However,alternative energy sources usually poses extra challenges to adopters due to higher costs, mainlyin the developing and emerging countries where: 1) basic needs still remain to be covered, and 2)top technologies, such as the required in those initiatives, are likely not to be promptly available.This article aims to verify the status of the current renewable energy sources contribution tothe regular energy systems of some countries across the Latin American region as a measureto reduce the adverse impact over the average temperature and extreme climate events. LatinAmerica, despite its vast territory and considerable availability of natural resources – which couldwell place the region in a leading position in terms of alternative energy – is still in the earlystages of having the mindset and infrastructure required to respond to the current environmentalchallenges. This exploratory study compares the database of renewable energy and climatechange drivers of some Latin American countries, seeking to verify similarities and differences,as well as the possible effect of strategies and government policies, barriers and issues in thegeneration of an energy system that support the region economic growth while following the keyprinciples of sustainability. For our research, we use Multivariate Analysis based on a large set ofavailable and updated open public indicators to establish critical areas and regional progress. Themain finding is that, if not at length comparable to the leading EU countries and other advancedeconomies in the matter, some countries in the region have been presenting important advancesto date, being able to combine economic growth to friendly-environmental practices – oftena hard equation to solve – while others, on the contrary, stay behind in sustainable practices.Most importantly, at last, is the highlight of initiatives that stand out as positive examples havinghelped mitigate the environmental burden, clearly pointing towards solutions to the challenge ofhaving sustainable development inclusive practices in the Latin American region.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Maria Nzomo ◽  
Zerubabel Getachew

Energy is a crucial factor in international relations and a critical input to achieve global economic growth and development. Provision of affordable, sustainable, and reliable energy is necessary and a prerequisite for any country’s economic growth and prosperity. The United Nations Agenda 2030, through its Seventh Sustainable Development Goal (SGD 7) and the African Union Agenda 2063 Aspiration 1recognise the centrality of access to energy towards realising the ambitions enlisted in these documents. The asymmetric distribution of natural resources and the political, strategic, financial, and technological challenges in utilising these resources hinder countries from availing affordable, sustainable, and reliable energy by using domestic sources alone. The inability to attain energy independence makes a compelling case for nations to increasingly integrate their energy supply chains to international and regional energy markets. As a result, ensuring access to affordable energy has become a core interest of regional foreign relations. Therefore, if geopolitics permits, energy cooperation and interdependence become the ultimate and sustainable path towards energy security. Africa has tremendous potential ranging from hydrocarbons to renewable energies. Nevertheless, it has failed to provide adequate energy for its social and economic needs mainly due to poor governance and related challenges. Africa has to utilise such humongous and diversified energy resources by embracing an optimal energy mix that contributes to regional economic development and energy integration. Eastern Africa, home to various renewable energy resources, is one of the energy-poor regions in Africa. The prevailing energy system in the sub-region is hydro-based and lacks reliability. The sub-region has tremendous renewable energy resources such as wind, solar, and geothermal. Still, their utilisation is negligible due to several challenges, including governance and lack of access to finance and technology. This paper argues that an integrated and regional approach to developing the energy sector in Eastern Africa can address the energy-related challenges and contribute towards regional integration in Eastern Africa. In particular, the development of geothermal energy, within the optimal energy mix in the sub-region, for both power generation and direct use application will play a crucial role in forging energy integration in Eastern Africa. In this regard, regional institutions such as power pools and regional economic communities are indispensable.   Received: 27 June 2021 / Accepted: 5 August 2021 / Published: 5 September 2021


Author(s):  
L. Karbovska ◽  
I. Yakushik ◽  
E. Feshchenko ◽  
I. Kalina ◽  
A. Kozlova

Abstract. It is substantiated that the factor of economic growth, increase of economic and energy security, preservation of the environment from the detrimental impact of the consequences of consumption of hydrocarbon energy sources is the sustainable development of renewable energy. The state and prospects of using renewable energy sources in the world are considered (RES). The rating of countries by the share of electricity produced from renewable sources as a percentage of primary sources during 2015—2019 is presented, which shows that the largest share of RES is in countries such as: Iceland, Kenya and Latvia; Currently, the largest growth in renewable energy is observed in Ukraine, Great Britain, Turkey, Denmark, Japan, France, the USA and Germany. The generalized factors of growth of demand for renewable energy sources are: parity of the price and productivity owing to decrease in the price of RES; increasing the efficiency of energy production due to technological progress and the introduction of innovative technologies in foreign trade; integration of power grids and balancing the load on them; stimulating the demand for RES by large cities — the implementation of the strategy of «smart city» includes «smart» energy; development of public ownership of networks and sources of renewable energy; active participation of developing countries in the dissemination of renewable energy; growing participation of the corporate sector in the development of renewable energy. The relationship between the goals of energy development in terms of its accessibility, reliability, sustainability and goals in the field of sustainable development is determined. Thus, poverty reduction (goal 1) involves expanding access to basic resources and services and the availability of modern infrastructure, an element of which is RES; the use of clean renewable energy will help reduce health risks (disease prevention and pandemic control) (objective 3); creation of sustainable infrastructure, promotion of innovations (goal 9) involves the use of clean and environmentally friendly technologies and sustainable energy development; the use of RES activity has a synergistic connection with the implementation of goal 13 — urgent measures to combat climate change and its consequences. Keywords: sustainable development goals, economic growth, energy security, renewable energy sources, hydrocarbon fuel, decarbonization. JEL Classification F29, F43, L94, O10 Formulas: 0; fig.: 0; tabl.: 2; bibl.: 17.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-32
Author(s):  
Ming Na ◽  
Ying Li ◽  
Kang Li

Under the background of the global energy shortage and Japan's Fukushima nuclear spill, Japan is faced with an important choice whether to abandon nuclear power or develop renewable energy. This paper used autoregressive distributed lag model to do the empirical analysis of the relationship between renewable energy generating capacity and economic growth, using the data of renewable energy generating capacity and real GDP between 1991 and 2010. The empirical evidence suggests that renewable energy generating capacity in Japan has emerged the ability to boost and promote economic growth in Japan in both the long-term and short-term. If the Japanese government determines to develop the renewable energy industry vigorously, Japan's economy is likely to usher in the take-off once again in the future, in addition that it will benefit the environmental mitigation and protection issues such as energy security.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilek Temiz Dinç ◽  
Ece Akdoğan

There exists a highly interrelated relationship between energy, the environment and growth where the efficient management of this nexus is not only a must for sustainable development and human wellbeing but is also a basis for formulating sound economic policies harnessed with energy and environmental policies. Thus, this paper aims at investigating the causal relationships among renewable energy production, total energy consumption and economic growth for Turkey both in the long and short runs. The analyses are conducted by using the Johansen–Juselius co-integration test, the vector error correction model, Granger causality, impulse-response functions and variance decomposition for the period 1980–2016. Our findings obtained for the causal relationship between renewable energy and economic growth points to a bidirectional relationship both in the short and in long runs that promote feedback hypothesis, and it also reports a causal relationship running from energy consumption to economic growth both in the short and long runs, supporting the growth hypothesis. However, no consistent result could be obtained for the short run relationship from economic growth to energy consumption. These results indicate that increased renewable energy production and decreased energy consumption are vital for Turkey’s sustainable development.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Taiwo Ajilore ◽  
Sylvanus Ikhide

The study examined the assumption that ‘size matters’ in the empirical controversy of the relationship between migrants’ remittances and economic growth. This is done through an empirical analysis of the remittances-growth relationships in selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, where remittance inflows are overwhelming proportions of real GDP. The study used data at the country level, for five countries: Cape Verde, Lesotho, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo. The long-run ARDL estimates indicate positive and significant effects of migrants’ remittances on growth performance in Cape Verde and Nigeria, but negative, and slightly significant effects for Lesotho, with no evidence of long-run level relationships between remittances and economic growth in Senegal and Togo. Thus, the assumption that size may matter in the remittance–growth nexus finds no support, as findings provide no significant departure from the existing inconclusiveness of empirical literature on the relationship. For policy, the study advocates country-level policies that improve the efficiency of remittance inflows and promote the use of remittances for developmental purposes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 137-144
Author(s):  
Lu Liu

Abstract This study probes the causal link between renewable electrical consumption (REC) and economic growth (EG) in Romanian. In recent years, the development of renewable energy in Romania has achieved basic results, but it also faces many problems, such as funding, technical policies and so on. This paper reviews the development motivation, characteristics and main problems of renewable energy in Romania. And put forward strategies such as increasing investment in research and development, adapting to local conditions and sustainable development.


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