Can educational attainment promote renewable energy consumption? Evidence from heterogeneous panel models
International Journal of Energy Sector Management
ISSN: 1750-6220
Article publication date: 20 January 2022
Issue publication date: 23 September 2022
Abstract
Purpose
For mitigating climate change, renewable energy consumption is recognized as one of the policy measures worldwide. However, there is a dearth of empirical studies focusing on education as one of the determinants of renewable energy consumption in the existing literature. Thus, this study aims to explore the impact of education, economic growth and foreign direct investment, financial development, CO2 emissions and urbanization on renewable energy consumption.
Design/methodology/approach
This study considers a balanced panel of selected South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, namely, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, during the period 1995–2015. The study uses sophisticated second-generation panel data models for empirical analysis.
Findings
The result reveals that education and economic growth significantly enhance renewable energy consumption, whereas foreign direct investment, financial development, CO2 emissions and urbanization reduce it. Further, unidirectional causality from education, economic growth and urbanization to renewable energy consumption was observed, whereas a bidirectional causality was found between renewable energy consumption and financial development.
Practical implications
The emanated finding of this study is supposed to be helpful for the environmentalists, economists, banking sector and the practitioners in urban development can take insights from the study while framing the energy policy.
Originality/value
This is the first study that examines the role of education on renewable energy consumption in heterogeneous panel data settings for the selected SAARC countries.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: The authors involved in this research communication do not have any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Authors contributions: J: Writing – original draft preparation introduction and literature. V, M A: conceptualization, data curation, software, writing – original draft preparation, policy implications introduction, reviewing, conclusion, editing overall draft and restructuring, visualization. VN: supervision.
Competing interests: The authors of the paper do not have any conflict of interest.
Availability of data and materials: The data sets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Citation
, J., Villanthenkodath, M.A. and Velan, N. (2022), "Can educational attainment promote renewable energy consumption? Evidence from heterogeneous panel models", International Journal of Energy Sector Management, Vol. 16 No. 6, pp. 1017-1036. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJESM-06-2021-0015
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited