Economic growth and environmental technology simultaneously important for reducing energy poverty and ecological footprint in E7 economies: do political institutions play a role?

Abstract

Energy poverty and climate change are major concerns for the emerging seven countries. Therefore, this study explores the economic growth impact on reducing energy poverty and ecological footprint in the emerging seven economies from 2000 to 2019. Energy poverty is measured using three disciplines: availability poverty, accessibility poverty, and affordability poverty. We applied a new dynamic method, "bias-corrected method of moments estimators (2021)," for long-run outcomes. This study used the environmental Kuznets curve-approach to measure economic growth's scale effect and technique effect to reduce energy poverty and ecological footprint. Importantly, the study explores the mediating role of politically stable institutions in mitigating environmental and energy poverty. Our findings validate that energy poverty and ecological footprint could not reduce at the initial stage of economic growth. However, the later development stage shows a positive effect on reducing energy poverty and ecological footprint. These results validated an inverted U-shaped Kuznets curve hypothesis for emerging seven. Further, the result found that strong political systems are more quick-witted and have the legislative power to swiftly implement beneficial policies to pull out of the vicious circle of energy poverty. Further, environmental technology significantly reduced energy poverty and ecological footprint. The causality analysis entails that a bidirectional exists between energy poverty, income, and ecological footprint.