The Impact of Renewable Energy Consumption on the Human Development Index in Selected Countries: Panel Analysis (1990-2015)

Abstract

Human Development Index combines three well known dimensions: long healthy life, education and standard of living. Energy influences all these dimensions either directly or indirectly, that is one of the reasons why countries should focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that come directly from energy use, and improve energy efficiency activities while at the same time not affecting the human development process. By studying the relationship between energy and human development, through PVAR analysis, this paper contributes to the efforts of promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency while acting globally for climate change mitigation. The analysis covers 4 panels representing four income levels distributed among the globe throughout the period from 1990 to 2015. First and second panel unit root and cointegration tests are being applied after examining for cross sectional correlation between each panel units, then PVAR analysis is being conducted for each panel through a system GMM methodology. Results show that in all of the four panels the impact of renewable energy consumption in reducing the per capita CO2 emissions is found to be insignificant for all of the four panels. Moreover, the impact of the renewable energy consumption on the HDI is found to be insignificant among the selected countries in all of the panels except the lower middle-income countries.