The transition of renewable energy and ecological sustainability through environmental policy stringency: Estimations from advance panel estimators

Due to growing awareness and increased pressure from stakeholders, global economies impose stringent environmental policies to control climate changes, which instigate the transition of renewable energy. Following the same aspects, the present study elucidates the impacts of environmental policy stringency and renewable energy transition on environmental quality for BRICS economies. This study employs a cross-section augmented autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework on data from 1990 to 2019. The results reveal that stringent environmental policies are one of the most significant ways to impede carbon emissions (CE) in BRICS economies. Besides, renewable energy has an inverse relationship with CE. On the other hand, the industrial value-added and economic growth are positively significant to CE. Furthermore, renewable energy transition is integrated into the model using interaction terms of renewable energy and stringent environmental policies. The finding described that the combined effects of these two variables are more substantial than their individual impacts on CE reduction, confirming the transition of renewable energy through stringent regulations. The study provides valuable insights to policymakers to facilitate the overall environmental quality in BRICS economies by focusing on strict environmental policies. These results have also delineated the importance of renewable energies to mitigate CE. (C) 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Automated summary

This study investigates the impacts of environmental policy stringency and renewable energy transition on environmental quality for BRICS economies. The findings suggest that stringent environmental policies are effective in reducing carbon emissions, and renewable energy has a negative relationship with carbon emissions. Additionally, industrial value-added and economic growth have a positive impact on carbon emissions. The study highlights the importance of combining renewable energy transition and stringent environmental policies for achieving carbon emission reductions.