Are clean energy technologies a panacea for environmental sustainability in sub-Saharan African countries?

Abstract

This study examines the impact of clean energy technologies on environmental sustainability in 29 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries while controlling for income, industrialization and trade from 2002 to 2018. We used the generalized quantile regression,which controls variable endogeneity using lagged instruments. In addition, Bayesian panel regression was used for robustness checks. We used the load capacity factor (LCF) as a broad measure of environmental sustainability that captures both nature's supply and man's demand for the environment. The findings show that clean energy technologies (clean fuels and renewable energy), have positive and statistically significant effects on environmental sustainability for nearly all quantiles in SSA. The findings are still the same after verifying the robustness analysis, showing that the coefficients for clean fuels and renewable energy technologies in quantile regression are within the Bayesian probability credible intervals and all have positive impacts on ensuring environmental sustainability in SSA. Furthermore, the results show that economic growth (income) has asymmetric (both negative and positive) effects on environmental sustainability across different quantile, confirming the Load Capacity Curve (LCC) hypothesis in SSA while accounting for clean energy technologies in the model. The findings further indicate that industrialization and trade have heterogeneous impacts on environmental sustainability. Overall, our findings imply that clean energy technologies improve environmental sustainability in SSA. Our main recommendation to policymakers is that sub-Saharan Africa needs to reduce the cost of energy services (i.e., renewable energy and clean fuels for cooking) in order to achieve greater environmental sustainability.

The trilemma of food production, clean energy, and water: COP27 perspective of global economy

“…of water management. According to the findings, ACFT appears to have a beneficial impact on food export, which endorses the earlier findings of Rezaei-Moghaddam and colleagues (2020),Canales et al (2020),Simeone et al (2020),Byaro et al (2023),Perlatti et al (2014), andNwachukwu (2023). Incorporating sustainable green technological advancements in food production, such as using renewable energy and organic fertilizers, could help improve Green Agriculture and food security for the ever-increasing global population.…”

“…The issue of the linkages between access to clean technologies and food production has received importance in recent years (Byaro et al, 2023;Canale et al, 2020;Pombo-Romero & Rúas-Barrosa, 2022;Rezaei-Moghaddam et al 2020;Simeone et al, 2020). Limited research directly focuses on the linkages between access to green technologies for cooking and food exports.…”

“…Canales argues that access to clean technologies, finance, and clean energy is key to a more sustainable food production process. Byaro et al (2023) suggest that policymakers should focus on reducing the cost of energy services to achieve greater environmental sustainability, especially in sub-Saharan African countries where energy access is a significant barrier to economic growth.…”