THE IMPACT OF NON-FOSSIL ENERGY CONSUMPTION ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY : Investigating ecological footprints
Abstract: This study aims to investigate the impact of non-fossil energy consumption on environmental quality. The sample includes 36 OECD countries for the period 1993-2016. This study investigates environmental quality by analyzing the ecological footprint and its six components of cropland, forest land, grazing land, fishing grounds, built-up land, and carbon footprint. The ecological footprints’ six components underline a relationship between human demands and the biological supply of earth resources. This relationship is of major concern due to the hazardous development in global warming and climate change. Further, this study investigates the presence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in the sample of OECD countries. The main results from the Generalized Method of Moments and Fixed Effects estimators revealed that increased use of non-fossil energy consumption reduces the carbon footprint, while it increases the environmental damage on grazing land and fishing grounds. Moreover, the EKC hypothesis was only confirmed for grazing land and fishing grounds but was not confirmed for carbon, built-up land, forest land, and cropland. The results of this study have several policy implications that are further discussed.
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