Nexus between CO2 emissions, renewable energy consumption, militarisation, and economic growth in South Africa: Evidence from using novel dynamic ARDL simulations

The South African government battles with global warming issues while attempting to achieve the United Na-tions Sustainable Development Goals-7 & 13 (that is, affordable clean energy and climate change mitigation). To the best of our knowledge, no studies have focused exclusively on this research topic, and it is on this basis that in this article, the novel dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) simulations approach was employed for the purpose of estimating, simulating and plotting to investigate the CO2 emissions-renewable energy consumption-militarisation-economic growth nexus in South Africa (SA). The study spans between 1960 and 2019 and applies frequency domain causality. The main findings suggest that: (i) there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between the variables; (ii) the causality results differ; (iii) the treadmill theory of destruction and the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis hold in SA. Overall, this study recommends a synergy between defence, renewable energy, growth and environmental policies in both the short-and long-run for the purpose of promoting and maintaining environmental quality in SA.

Automated summary

The South African government is addressing global warming issues and striving to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals-7 & 13 (affordable clean energy and climate change mitigation). This article presents a novel approach using dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) simulations to study the nexus between CO2 emissions, renewable energy consumption, militarization, and economic growth in South Africa. The findings reveal a long-run equilibrium relationship between these variables, differing causality results, and support for the treadmill theory of destruction and the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in South Africa. The study recommends a synergy between defense, renewable energy, growth, and environmental policies to promote and maintain environmental quality in South Africa in both the short and long term.