Can e-government facilitate the deployment of renewable energy?

The transition to green energy plays a pivotal role in addressing environmental, economic, and social challenges. At the same time, effective government can facilitate innovation, entrepreneurship, and green investment, stimulating the transition toward renewable energy sources. Our contribution to the discourse delves into the effect of e-government on renewable energy deployment, while also examining the specific mechanisms driving this relationship. Employing a panel regression model with fixed effects and using the generalized method of moments (GMM), the analysis is carried out for 188 countries from 2003 to 2020. A panel Granger causality test indicates unidirectional causality between e-government initiatives and renewable energy deployment. We find that initiatives in e-government accelerate the green transition by increasing the share of renewable energy consumption in total final energy. Our findings are consistent through different robustness analyses. Moreover, the long-term impact of e-government on accelerating the renewable energy transition outweighs its short-term effect significantly. Among the components of e-government, our analysis suggests that the effect of e-government can likely be attributed to the development of telecommunications infrastructure and e-participation. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the observed impact of e-government on renewable energy transition is more pronounced in developing countries. In terms of mechanisms, our results indicate that e-government can enhance government effectiveness and reduce the cost of doing business, positively transmitting the influence of e-government to the transition to renewable energy. This study furnishes policymakers with valuable insights into how effective governance can not only foster transparency and cost saving but also cultivate the green transition landscape and help achieve long-term benefits.