The eco-innovative technologies, human capital, and energy pricing: Evidence of sustainable energy transition in developed economies

Abstract

A sustainable energy transition is crucial in attaining sustainable development goals (SDGs-2030). Human capital, technological innovation, and energy pricing have been used to make sustainable energy transitions in highly developed economies like the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This study attempted to probe the impact of these factors on aggregated and disaggregated energy sources. For this purpose, this research work employed a dataset of all OECD nations between 1991 and 2019. The study applied to mean group (MG), dynamic fixed effect (DFE), and pooled mean group (PMG) to evaluate the short and long-run factors of these variables. In addition, the augmented mean group (AMG) and Dynamic Common Correlated Effects (DCCE) with cross-sectional Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) were utilized to validate the long-run results' robustness. Finally, we applied panel quantiles regression (PQR). The outcomes of the empirical investigation confirm that the GDP growth rate in OECD contributes positively to renewable energy factors and negatively to non-renewable energy factors. Energy pricing, human capital, and technological innovations are the leading tools for the OECD to discourage fossil energy intake and motivate to increase green and clean energy consumption.