Reducing carbon emissions: The role of renewable energy and democracy

Abstract The global economy continues to witness a consistent increase in carbon emissions, making it difficult to achieve the Paris agreement on climate change. To inform policies to mitigate carbon emissions, it is crucial to understand the factors that influence it. While there is a vast literature on the impact of economic growth on carbon emissions, empirical research on the impact of democracy and renewable energy on environmental quality in developing countries remains limited. Therefore, the goal of this paper was to examine the impact of democracy and renewable energy on carbon emissions for 46 sub-Saharan African countries using unbalanced data for the period of 1980–2015. Using an instrumental variable generalised-method of the moment, the study found that democracy and renewable energy reduce carbon emissions. Additionally, foreign direct investment, trade openness, population, and economic growth were the forces behind carbon emissions in sub-Saharan Africa. However, when democracy is accounted for, economic growth turns to reduce carbon emissions. No evidence of Environmental Kuznets curve was found. The results further indicated that the impact of urbanization on carbon emissions is indeterminate. These results are robust when alternative econometric estimation techniques were used. The study further demonstrated that the level of economic development matters when assessing the impact of these variables on carbon emissions. The study, therefore, recommends that democracy and investment in renewable energy should be given priority on Africa agenda to mitigate climate change.

[1]  B. Shakouri,et al.  The renewable energy, CO2 emissions, and economic growth: VAR model , 2018 .

[2]  David A. Lake,et al.  The Invisible Hand of Democracy , 2001 .

[3]  M. Olson,et al.  The Economics of Autocracy and Majority Rule: The Invisible Hand and the Use of Force , 1996 .

[4]  Martin C. McGuire,et al.  The Economics of Autoc-racy and Majority Rule , 1996 .

[5]  Soheila khoshnevis Yazdi,et al.  The dynamic impact of renewable energy consumption and financial development on CO2 emissions: For selected African countries , 2018 .

[6]  Huiming Zhu,et al.  The heterogeneous effect of democracy, political globalization, and urbanization on PM2.5 concentrations in G20 countries: Evidence from panel quantile regression , 2018, Journal of Cleaner Production.

[7]  Daniel J. Fiorino.  Citizen Participation and Environmental Risk: A Survey of Institutional Mechanisms , 1990 .

[8]  Douglas A. Hibbs,et al.  Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy , 1977, American Political Science Review.

[9]  Eyup Dogan,et al.  CO2 emissions, real output, energy consumption, trade, urbanization and financial development: testing the EKC hypothesis for the USA , 2015, Environmental Science and Pollution Research.

[10]  Michael Bernhard,et al.  Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach , 2011, Perspectives on Politics.

[11]  Samuel Asumadu Sarkodie,et al.  Renewable energy, nuclear energy, and environmental pollution: Accounting for political institutional quality in South Africa. , 2018, The Science of the total environment.

[12]  G. Hardin,et al.  The Tragedy of the Commons , 1968, Green Planet Blues.

[13]  D. Conway,et al.  Adaptation to climate change in Africa: Challenges and opportunities identified from Ethiopia , 2011 .

[14]  B. Shakouri,et al.  The effect of renewable energy and urbanization on CO2 emissions: A panel data , 2018 .

[15]  A. Mol.  The environmental state and environmental governance , 2018 .

[16]  Fredric C. Menz,et al.  The role of social, political, and economic interests in promoting state green electricity policies , 2006 .

[17]  C. Hobson.  Addressing climate change and promoting democracy abroad: compatible agendas? , 2012 .

[18]  Z. Clulow.  When does economic development promote mitigation and why? , 2018 .

[19]  M. Farzanegan,et al.  Development and pollution in the Middle East and North Africa: Democracy matters , 2018 .

[20]  Christopher Jeffords,et al.  Toward Environmental Democracy? Procedural Environmental Rights and Environmental Justice , 2018, Global Environmental Politics.

[21]  Y. H. Farzin,et al.  Democracy and Environmental Quality , 2006 .

[22]  A. Alesina.  Macroeconomic Policy in a Two-Party System as a Repeated Game , 1987 .

[23]  P. Collier,et al.  The Politics of Hunger , 2008 .

[24]  S. Hammoudeh,et al.  Trade openness–carbon emissions nexus: The importance of turning points of trade openness for country panels , 2016 .

[25]  James R. McFarland,et al.  Can Paris pledges avert severe climate change? , 2015, Science.

[26]  R. Deacon.  Public good provision under dictatorship and democracy , 2009 .

[27]  Z. Clulow.  Democracy, electoral systems and emissions: explaining when and why democratization promotes mitigation , 2018, Climate Policy.

[28]  Perry Sadorsky,et al.  The effect of urbanization on CO2 emissions in emerging economies , 2014 .

[29]  T. Bernauer,et al.  Effects of political institutions on air quality , 2009 .

[30]  C. Toulmin.  Climate Change in Africa , 2009 .

[31]  M. Beeson.  The coming of environmental authoritarianism , 2010 .

[32]  P. Joshi,et al.  Democracy and carbon dioxide emissions: Assessing the interactions of political and economic freedom and the environmental Kuznets curve , 2018 .

[33]  Y. Hao,et al.  Does government ideology affect environmental pollutions? New evidence from instrumental variable quantile regression estimations , 2018 .

[34]  M. Midlarsky,et al.  Democracy and the Environment: An Empirical Assessment , 1998 .

[35]  Rafael Reuveny,et al.  Democracy and Environmental Degradation , 2006 .

[36]  B. Bhaskara Rao,et al.  Do Economic, Financial and Institutional Developments Matter for Environmental Degradation? Evidence from Transitional Economies , 2008 .

[37]  Matthew J. Burke,et al.  Political power and renewable energy futures: A critical review , 2017 .

[38]  Roula Inglesi-Lotz,et al.  The role of renewable versus non-renewable energy to the level of CO2 emissions a panel analysis of sub- Saharan Africa’s Βig 10 electricity generators , 2018, Renewable Energy.

[39]  Bradley C. Parks,et al.  Fueling Injustice: Globalization, Ecologically Unequal Exchange and Climate Change , 2007 .

[40]  I. Ozturk,et al.  What drives carbon dioxide emissions in the long-run? Evidence from selected South Asian Countries , 2016 .

[41]  S. Dasgupta,et al.  Confronting the Environmental Kuznets Curve , 2002 .

[42]  L. Scruggs.  Institutions and Environmental Performance in Seventeen Western Democracies , 1999, British Journal of Political Science.

[43]  A. Acheampong.  Economic growth, CO2 emissions and energy consumption: What causes what and where? , 2018, Energy Economics.

[44]  Christopher F. Baum,et al.  Instrumental Variables and GMM: Estimation and Testing , 2003 .

[45]  C. Liao,et al.  Impact of population and economic growth on carbon emissions in Taiwan using an analytic tool STIRPAT , 2017 .

[46]  Nicholas Apergis,et al.  On the causal dynamics between emissions, nuclear energy, renewable energy, and economic growth ☆ , 2010 .

[47]  S. Adams,et al.  Do globalization and renewable energy contribute to carbon emissions mitigation in Sub-Saharan Africa? , 2019, The Science of the total environment.

[48]  B. Saboori,et al.  Investigating the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in Vietnam , 2015 .

[49]  Frédérich Varone,et al.  Energy efficiency: the challenges of policy design , 2001 .

[50]  K. Frimpong,et al.  Heat exposure on farmers in northeast Ghana , 2017, International Journal of Biometeorology.

[51]  K. Vadlamannati,et al.  Does Higher Economic and Financial Development Lead to Environmental Degradation: Evidence from BRIC Countries , 2017 .

[52]  G. Grossman,et al.  Economic Growth and the Environment , 1994 .

[53]  D. Roubaud,et al.  Environmental degradation in France: The effects of FDI, financial development, and energy innovations , 2018, Energy Economics.

[54]  Marina Povitkina.  The limits of democracy in tackling climate change , 2018 .

[55]  Xiaoling Zhang,et al.  The role of renewable energy consumption and commercial services trade in carbon dioxide reduction: Evidence from 25 developing countries , 2018 .

[56]  S. Adams,et al.  Reducing carbon dioxide emissions; Does renewable energy matter? , 2019, The Science of the total environment.

[57]  J. Morin,et al.  Mapping the Trade and Environment Nexus: Insights from a New Data Set , 2018, Global Environmental Politics.

[58]  A. Acheampong.  Modelling for insight: Does financial development improve environmental quality? , 2019, Energy Economics.

[59]  J. Oosthuizen,et al.  A review of heat stress policies in the context of climate change and its impacts on outdoor workers: Evidence from Zimbabwe , 2018 .

[60]  Conrad Kunze,et al.  Transcending community energy: collective and politically motivated projects in renewable energy (CPE) across Europe , 2014 .

[61]  S. Adams,et al.  Financial development and environmental degradation: Does political regime matter? , 2018, Journal of Cleaner Production.

[62]  K. Harrison,et al.  The Comparative Politics of Climate Change , 2007, Global Environmental Politics.

[63]  M. Abid.  Does economic, financial and institutional developments matter for environmental quality? A comparative analysis of EU and MEA countries. , 2017, Journal of environmental management.