Renewable energy, non-renewable energy and sustainable development

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study is to analyse the effects of renewable energy and non-renewable energy on sustainable development. This study is pioneering in this respect because it analyses the effect of renewable energy on adjusted net savings, which is a good sustainable development variable. For this purpose, the data of 40 developed and 73 developing countries were included. According to the estimation results obtained in the study, renewable energy has a positive and statistically significant effect on sustainable development both in developed countries and in developing countries. The impact of renewable energy on sustainable development is greater than the impact of non-renewable energy. In this respect, as the renewable energy amount increases, the level of sustainable development increases. According to these results, the fact that countries use renewable energy more than non-renewable energy sources is extremely important in terms of making progress towards sustainability of development and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable development
• renewable energy
• non- renewable energy
• endogeneity
• panel data analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Renewable energy sources include hydropower, bioenergy, thermal, geothermal, wind, photochemical, photoelectric, tidal, wave, and solar energy. It excludes energy from fossil fuel sources (oil, coal and natural gas) (TREIA 2015).

2. The following studies also provide further details: Apergis et al. (2010), Menyah and Wolde-Rufael (2010), Jebli et al. (2016), Jebli et al. (2015), Jebli and Youssef (2015), Solarin et al. (2017).

3. Bilgili et al. (2017) contains a wide range of literature on the impact of renewable energy on carbon emissions and growth.

4. Countries are provided in the Appendix A.

5. The World Development Indicators uses the term ‘adjusted net saving’ or ‘genuine saving’ or ‘genuine investment’.

6. WB benefits from work such as Hamilton and Clemens (1999) and Hamilton (2005) in the calculation of the net adjusted savings variable.

7. If the Cragg-Donald F statistic exceeds the 10% maximal IV size reported in Stock and Yogo (2005), the instrument is considered as ‘very powerful.’ If it is between 10% and 15% maximal IV sizes, it is labeled as ‘powerful.’ If it is between 15% and 20% maximal IV sizes, it is considered as ‘medium.’ For the values between 20% and 25% maximal IV sizes, it is marked as ‘weak’.