The impact of technological innovation on renewable energy production: accounting for the roles of economic and environmental factors using a method of moments quantile regression

Abstract

Advancement in renewables is one of the most effective techniques for sustained long-term development, and nations across the globe are making efforts to change their economic and industrial structures in a bid to boost green growth. With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the availability, access, and use of green technologies including renewable energy have significantly improved. Researches on the factors that influence renewable energy production are available. However, we are unaware of any previous research that examines the role of renewable energy innovation in the promotion of renewable energy production. As a result, this study evaluates the impact of technical innovation on green growth from 1993 to 2018, while accounting for real GDP, producer price index, and CO2 emissions. Due to their pivotal status among the developing countries, our study has focused on the BRICS countries. By using a new panel quantile regression augmented with the method of moments, the empirical findings suggest that the influence of renewable energy innovation on renewable energy production is significantly positive across all quantiles. Moreover, the coefficients are generally bigger at the small quantiles, which suggests that countries with smaller renewable energy production per capita (India and South Africa) have a higher probability to experience a greater impact of renewable energy innovation per capita than countries with bigger renewable energy production per capita (Brazil and Russia).