Abstract
The new Agenda 2030 for sustainable development call for initiatives to bridge the gap between environmental protection and socio-economic development. To provide insight on the relationship between socio-economics, and ecology, the current study examines the effectiveness of environmental stringency and green energy to mitigate the effects of fossil energy and greenhouse gas emissions on human well-being and income for 12 emerging economies. The outcomes from dynamic heterogeneous panel estimators of cross-sectional–based auto regressive distributed lag and cross-sectional–augmented distributed lag indicate that: (i) green energy consumption and electricity consumption have a substantial positive effect on well-being and per capita income. (ii) The stringent environmental policy is found to decrease per capita income, but it increases well-being, while the square of environmental stringency is found to increase per capita income. (iii) Fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have a negative effect on well-being but a positive impact on income. The outcome of U-test confirmed the presence of a U-shaped curve with a turning point (0.433) between per capita income and environmental policy stringency. This study yielded consistent results from the panel Granger causality test. Based on our findings, we may argue that it is necessary to prioritize human well-being over economic growth, and suggest several policy implications to achieve sustainable development goals.
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Data availability
The data used for estimation purposes in this research is taken from World Banks database, World Development Indicators (WDI) available at https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators, BP Statistical Review of world energy available at https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy, OECD States available at https://stats.oecd.org/viewhtml.aspx?datasetcode=EPS&lang=en, Climate Watch Data available at https://www.climatewatchdata.org/, and Our world in data available at https://ourworldindata.org/.
Change history
19 June 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28296-0
Abbreviations
- EMEs:
-
Emerging Market Economies
- GHG:
-
Greenhouse Gas
- CO2 :
-
Carbon dioxide Emissions
- SDGS:
-
Sustainable Development Goals
- WHO:
-
World Health Organization
- CS-ARDL:
-
Cross-sectional Auto Regressive Distributed Lag
- CS-DL:
-
Cross-Sectional Augmented Distributed lag
- CADF:
-
Cross-Sectional Augmented Dickey-Fuller
- CIPS:
-
Cross-sectionally Augmented Im, Pesaran and Shin
- CSD:
-
Cross-Sectional Dependence
- GMM:
-
Generalized Method of Moment
- GWR:
-
Geographically weighted regression
- SO2 :
-
Sulfur dioxide
- PM2.5:
-
Fine particulate matter
- PM10:
-
Particulate Matter
- CO:
-
Carbon monoxide
- LE:
-
Life Expectancy
- CIS:
-
Commonwealth of Independent States
- HDI:
-
Human Development Index
- OECD:
-
Organisation for Economic Co-operation
- FEC:
-
Fossil Energy Consumption
- GDP:
-
Gross Domestic Product
- EPS:
-
Environmental Policy Stringency
- GEC:
-
Green Energy Consumption
- ELC:
-
Electricity Consumption
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Funding
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Key Project of National Social Science Fund of China (grant number 19AJY011); The Major Project of Jiangsu’s Social Science Fund (grant number 21ZD005); Scientific Research Fund for the Fifth Phase of “333 High-level Talent Training Project” of Jiangsu Province in 2020 (grant number BRA2020038); and The Major Project of Nanjing’s Social Science Fund (grant number 21ZD02). The China Scholarship Council (NO.202106095003)
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Muhammad Tariq—Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Formal Analysis, Writing Original draft, Visualization and Investigation. Yingzhi Xu—Supervision, Writing, Reviewing and Editing.
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Missing closing parenthesis in the denominator of Equation 1. This correction is crucial to maintain the accuracy and integrity of the equation as intended in the manuscript.
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Tariq, M., Xu, Y. Heterogeneous effect of GHG emissions and fossil energy on well-being and income in emerging economies: a critical appraisal of the role of environmental stringency and green energy. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 70340–70359 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20853-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20853-3