The world is fast becoming a global village due to the increasing daily requirement of energy by all population across the world while the earth in its form cannot change. The need for energy and its related services to satisfy human social and economic development, welfare and health is increasing. Returning to renewables to help mitigate climate change is an excellent approach which needs to be sustainable in order to meet energy demand of future generations. The study reviewed the opportunities associated with renewable energy sources which includes: Energy Security, Energy Access, Social and Economic development, Climate Change Mitigation, and reduction of environmental and health impacts. Despite these opportunities, there are challenges that hinder the sustainability of renewable energy sources towards climate change mitigation. These challenges include Market failures, lack of information, access to raw materials for future renewable resource deployment, and our daily carbon footprint. The study suggested some measures and policy recommendations which when considered would help achieve the goal of renewable energy thus to reduce emissions, mitigate climate change and provide a clean environment as well as clean energy for all and future generations. Energy is a requirement in our everyday life as a way of improving human development leading to economic growth and productivity. The return-to-renewables will help mitigate climate change is an excellent way but needs to be sustainable in order to ensure a sustainable future and bequeath future generations to meet their energy needs. Knowledge regarding the interrelations between sustainable development and renewable energy in particular is still limited. The aim of the paper is to ascertain if renewable energy sources are sustainable and examine how a shift from fossil fuel-based energy sources to renewable energy sources would help reduce climate change and its impact. A qualitative research was employed by reviewing peer-reviewed papers in the area of study. This study brought to light the opportunities associated with renewable energy sources; energy security, energy access, social and economic development and climate change mitigation and reduction of environmental and health impacts.
Climate change has become a global phenomenon due to its threat to sustainable development. However, economic development plays a complementary role in both climate change and sustainability. Thus, the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is critical to climate change policy formulation and development strategies. Accordingly, this study aims to examine the validity of environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis by investigating the relationship between economic growth, energy consumption, financial development, and ecological footprint for the period from 1977 to 2013 in 11 newly industrialized countries. For this purpose, this study uses both augmented mean group (AMG) estimator and heterogeneous panel causality method which are suitable for dependent and heterogeneous panels. The results of the estimator show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and ecological footprint.According to the causality test results, it is concluded that there is bi-directional causality between economic growth and ecological footprint.
The institution of social distancing and punitive measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 through human-to-human transmission has environmental, health and economic impact. While the global pandemic has led to the enhancement of the health system and decline of emissions, economic development appears deteriorating. Here, we present the global environmental, health and economic dimension of the effect of COVID-19 using qualitative and empirical assessments. We report the health system policies, environmental sustainability issues, and fiscal, monetary and exchange rate measures introduced during lockdown across countries. While air pollution is reported to have declined, municipal and medical waste is increasing. The COVID-19 global pandemic uncertainty ranks the UK as the country with the highest uncertainty level among 143 countries. The USA has introduced 100% of pre-COVID-19 crisis level GDP, the highest policy cut-rate among 162 countries. Science, innovation, research and development underpin COVID-19 containment measures implemented across countries. Our study demonstrates the need for future research to focus on environment-health-economic nexus-a trilemma that has a potential trade-off.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations –citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.