Residential solar energy consumption and greenhouse gas nexus: Evidence from Morlet wavelet transforms

Abstract

Global warming is one of the most important environmental problems in the world. One might state that the most potential considerable cause of global warming is the increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. The commonly suggested method used to struggle with this potential problem is to consume renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels. In today's World, where the rate of urbanization is very high, the research on the effect of the energy demand of the residential sector on global warming has become a crucial research topic in the energy and climatic literature.Among different solar sectors, the residential sector is a major energy consumer. Considering the residential, commercial, and industrial solar sectors, the residential solar sector has become a major component of total solar energy. It accounts for approximately 43% of total solar. On the other hand, to the best of my knowledge, there exists no empirical study in the literature considering the influence of residential solar consumption on environmental quality. Thus, determining the effect of the most used energy source, residential solar, energy consumption on the environmental quality has arisen the key research problem of this paper. This research analyzes the effects of residential solar energy usage on CO2 emissions for the period 1989:1–2020:1 in the USA. It has been observed throughout Morlet wavelet analyses that the use of residential solar energy has a strong effect on mitigating CO2 emissions in the 1–2 year frequency. Eventually, this paper provides relevant potential energy policies that can enhance the efficiency of residential solar energy consumption.