CO2 behavior amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom: The role of renewable and non-renewable energy development

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic since the end of 2019 has forced an unprecedented lockdown worldwide, and environmental quality was significantly affected by the pandemic and its induced lockdown. The objective of this study is to examine the role of renewable energy, non-renewable energy and COVID-19 case on CO2 emission in the context of United Kingdom. Several non-linear techniques such as Fourier ADL cointegration test, Non-Linear ARDL, Markov switching regression, and Breitung and Candelon (BC) causality test are employed to attain this objective. The result reveals that there is long run cointegration among the variables in this study. The results demonstrate that positive (negative) shift in renewable energy development decrease (increase) CO2 emissions while positive (negative) shocks in fossil fuel energy increase CO2 emissions. Moreover, negative (positive) variation in COVID case leads to a decrease (increase) in CO2 emissions. Moreover, an uni-directional causal impact was found to run from all the variables - renewable energy, fossil fuel, and COVID-19 case to CO2 emissions. Finally, several policy recommendations are provided. (C) 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Automated summary

This study examines the impact of renewable energy, non-renewable energy, and COVID-19 cases on CO2 emissions in the United Kingdom. The results show that the development of renewable energy decreases CO2 emissions, while the use of fossil fuel energy increases CO2 emissions. Additionally, an increase in COVID-19 cases is associated with an increase in CO2 emissions.