Abstract
The paper presents a spatial approach to the analysis of the relationship between air pollution, economic growth, and renewable energy consumption. The economic growth of every country is based on the energy consumption that leads to an increase in national productivity. Using renewable energy is very important for the environmental protection and security of the earth’s resources. Promoting environmentally friendly operations increases awareness of sustainable development, which is currently a major concern of state governments. In this study, we explored the influence of economic growth and the share of renewable energy out of total energy consumption on CO2 emissions. The study was based on the classical environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and enriched with the spatial dependencies. In particular, we determined the spatial spillovers in the form of the indirect effects of changes in renewable energy consumption of a specific country on the CO2 emissions of neighboring countries. A neighborhood in this study was defined by ecological development similarity. The neighborhood matrix was constructed based on the values of the ecological footprint measure. We used the spatio-temporal Durbin model, with which the indirect effects were determined in relation to the spatially lagged renewable energy consumption. The results of our study also show the strength of the effects caused by imitating actions from the states with high levels of environmental protection. The study was conducted using data for 75 selected countries from the period of 2013–2019. Cumulative spatial and spatio-temporal effects allowed us to determine (1) the countries with the greatest impact on others and (2) the countries that follow the leading ones.
Highlights
The this study underline thethe rolerole of changes in the of energy conconsumption in the world economies for the improvement of the environmental situation
Environmental protection has become an increasingly important element of the economic development of countries, which is reflected in the contemporary concept of sustainable development
The Kuznets curve determined for the selected countries pointed to the inverse Ushaped relationship between the per capita GDP and CO2 emission
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Caring for the natural environment should be an integral part of the economic development policy of each country. State authorities have devoted too little attention to this issue so far, and the degradation of the environment caused by the overexploitation of natural resources and an excessive desire to become wealthy has been extreme. High levels of consumption of non-renewable energy sources and environmental pollution cause an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2 ). More emissions have a negative effect on the composition of the atmosphere and global climate [1]
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