The intermittent effects of renewable energy on ecological footprint: evidence from developing countries

This paper examines the relationship between renewable, non-renewable energy, natural resources, human capital, and globalization on ecological footprint from 1990 to 2016 for developing countries. We apply Westerlund co-integration technique to check the long-run relationship among the variables. The long-run elasticity of the model is analyzed through MG, AMG, and DCCE. For the robustness check of the long-run relationship among the variables, we use FMOLS and DOLS approach. The direction of causal relationship is determined through Dumitrescu and Hurlin causality test. Our findings revealed that economic growth, non-renewable energy, natural resource, and urbanization are inducing the ecological footprint of developing countries and reducing the environment’s quality. To cope up with this situation, developing countries are bound to use more fossil fuel energy. The use of non-renewable energy consumption leads to increase the extraction of natural resources like coal and oil. However, renewable energy reduces the ecological footprint or improves environmental quality. Similarly, human capital and globalization have negative effects on ecological footprint. The results of causality test reveal that there are feedback effects between ecological footprint with economic growth, globalization, and natural resources. This study suggests that these developing countries should focus more on the investment in the renewable energy sector, improve quality education, and make stringent environmental policy for protecting the nations from ecological issues.