Adaptive Analysis of 3E Factors (Economy, Energy, and Environment) for Renewable Energy Generation in the South and South-East Asian Region

Growing energy demand in the context of unprecedented changes in the climatic pattern is a challenge of the period. In light of this scenario, renewable energy, the widely accepted alternative for having energy security would be worth examining. Since Asia is accountable for a major portion of global energy demand and emission, this study investigates the impact of renewable energy consumption along with non–renewable energy consumption on environmental degradation and economic growth in 24 developing countries of Asia from 1990 to 2018. To account for the panel specific heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence, Pooled Mean Group model in Panel Auto Regressive Lag approach is used for analysis. Unlike most of the existing literature, this research work has considered ecological footprint as a proxy for environmental degradation, in addition to CO2 emission. The result showed that both type of energy consumption have positive impact on economic growth, but renewable energy consumption also helps to reduce the emission and ecological footprint. This implies that for developing countries of Asia renewable energy is the best option for having energy security and economic growth without degrading the climate and environment. Further the existence of conservation hypothesis indicates that countries considered for the analysis could adopt energy conservation measures with no fear of hurdle being caused on economic growth. The result also showed that economic growth measured by GDP is increasing the emission and ecological footprint. This implies the need for a transition to an environmentally sustainable way for economic growth.