Does United Kingdom’s Focus on Climate Technologies, Municipal Waste Treatment, and Economic Development aligns with its 2030 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)?

The study uses a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) to examine the dynamic impacts of municipal waste recycling, climate technologies, and economic growth on greenhouse gas emissions in the United Kingdom using data collected in time series from 1995 to 2020. We ran tests for impulse response, variance decomposition, stationarity, cointegration, and residuals. Greenhouse gas emissions in the United Kingdom, economic growth, climate technology, and municipal waste recycling, are all found to be cointegrated. The previous year’s deviation from long run equilibrium is corrected in the current period at an adjustment speed of 80%. Consequently, it takes around 1 year and 5 months to reach a stable condition. Municipal waste recycling and climate technologies has been found to promote reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the United Kingdom in both short-run and long-run. However, climate technology is more effective at lowering emissions of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gas emissions do go down in the long run, even though they go up at initial stages due to economic growth. Majority of the fluctuation in greenhouse gas emissions over both the short and long durations is explained by greenhouse gas emissions own shocks or innovations, rather than any external factors. Among the predictor variables, greenhouse gas variations in the short and long run are mostly attributable to changes in gross domestic product, with climate technology and municipal waste recycling following closely behind. The empirical analysis supports policy recommendations that the government and other stakeholders should improve their governing policies and methods on these variables to further succeed in regulating environmental pollution. Greenhouse gas emissions tend to rise in tandem with expanding economies, leading to substantial long-term volatility. Therefore, the economic management team of the United Kingdom government should establish legislation to limit economic activity that contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and instead provide support and funding for projects that are green and low-carbon. They want to cut emissions by 68% by 2030 as part of their National Determined Contribution (NDC), and this will get them there.