Does green environmental policy promote renewable energy consumption in BRICST? Fresh insights from panel quantile regression

Abstract

Understanding the aspects of renewable energy consumption is important because it contains low-carbon emissions, which could significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Little research is done on exploring the factors of renewable energy consumption. The primary objective of this study is to examine the impact of the green environmental policy on renewable energy consumption in the BRICST economies over data ranging from 1991 and 2019 by using panel quantile regression. The fixed-effects and quantile regressions confirm the positive effects of economic growth and non-renewable energy on renewable energy consumption. In contrast, the consumer price index and CO₂ hurt the renewable energy consumption in the BRICST economies. The estimate of the environmental policy stringency appears to be negative and insignificant in the fixed-effects model. On the other side, the estimates of the environmental stringency index appear to be positively significant from the 10th–40th quantiles and negatively significant from 50th–90th quantiles. Robust policy implications of our outcomes are also discussed.