The impact of hydro-biofuel-wind energy consumption on environmental cost of doing business in a panel of BRICS countries: evidence from three-stage least squares estimator

Abstract

The renewable energy sources are considered the vital factor to promote global green business. The environmental cost of doing business is the pre-requisite to analyze sustainable policies that facilitate the eco-minded entrepreneurs to produce healthier goods. This study examines the impact of renewable energy sources (i.e., hydro energy, biofuel energy, and wind energy) on the environmental cost of doing business in a panel of BRICS (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China, and South Africa) countries, for the period of 1995-2015. The study employed principal component analysis to construct an "integrated environmental index" by using three alternative and plausible factors including carbon dioxide emissions, fossil fuel energy consumption, and chemicals used in the manufacturing process. The environmental index is used as an interactive term with the three cost of doing business indicators including business disclosure index, the cost of business start-up procedures, and logistics performance index to form environmental cost of doing business (ECDB) indicators. The results of three-stage least squares (3SLS) estimator show that foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows supported the green business while trade openness deteriorates the environment, which partially validates the "pollution haven hypotheses (PHH)" in a panel of countries. There is no evidence for environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis; however, there is a monotonic decreasing relationship between per capita income and ECDB indicators. The hydro energy supports the sustainable business environment, while biofuel consumption deteriorates the environmental impact on the cost of business start-up procedures. Finally, wind energy subsequently affected the ECDB indicators in a panel of BRICS countries. The overall results conclude that growth factors and energy sources both have a considerable impact on the cost of doing business; therefore, there is a momentous need to formulate sustainable policy vista to magnetize green business across countries.

Determinants of green logistics in BRICS countries: An integrated supply chain model for green business

“…The study has a wider research contribution in the existing available research work, which shows the strong appearance in green supply chain management (GSCM) literature, i.e., the previous studies limited to primary research by using different manufacturing firm's data and evaluated the perceived value of line managers and different stakeholders about GSCM practices, reverse logistics, sustainable supply chain, etc., and linked up with policy inferences (see, Zhu and Sarkis 2004, Zhu et al 2008, Green et al 2012, Mitra and Datta 2014, Zhu et al 2017, Kaur et al 2018, while some other studies only limited to confined by few socio-economic and environmental factors with GSCM practices, including, green purchasing and eco-designing (see, Khan et al 2017b, Khan andQianli, 2017), FDI, industrialization, energy demand (see, Zaman and Shamsuddin 2017), carbon-fossil-GHG emissions (see, Khan et al 2017a). The previous literature is filled by numerous logistics indices, including, institutional and operational performance indices , supply chain functions (Green Jr. et al 2008), reverse logistics (Sbihi and Eglese, 2010), competitiveness (Rao and Holt, 2005), green innovations (Lin and Ho, 2008), regulatory control and green practices (Lin and Ho, 2011), green product designing (Wang, 2018), non-green energy sources (Khan et al 2018), environmental cost of doing business (Zaman, 2018), environmental sustainability (Wang et al 2017), green logistics (Arslan and Sar, 2017), etc.…”

Resource management for green growth: Ensure environment sustainability agenda for mutual exclusive global gain

“…The economy strives hard to combat the environmental evils with sustainable instruments that hope to recover the economy in coming years [2]. The vast literature is available on WEF's nexus and environmental related issues, that is, (i) biodiversity loss [3], (ii) renewable energy-biofuel energy [4], (iii) Transport emissions [5], (iv) WEF's nexus [6], (v) green logistics [7], (vi) sustainable tourism [8], (vii) health issues [9], and (viii) financial development [10]. These studies confirmed the volatility of climate change in different socio-economic environment across the globe.…”

Innovative Carbon Mitigation Techniques to Achieve Environmental Sustainability Agenda: Evidence from a Panel of 21 Selected R&D Economies

“…For instance, Naz et al [80] highly promoted the importance of RE demand in mitigating carbon emissions in the presence of FDI inflows and continued EG. Zaman [81] emphasized the need to use wind-hydro-biofuel energy demand in order to promote green business. Apergis et al [82] suggested the need to reinvest carbon money in healthcare infrastructure and RE-associated projects, which would help sustain the country's EG.…”