Renewable Energy and Clean Environment: A Panel data Augmented Renewable Consumption Energy Solow Growth Model approach

Abstract

As the global community need to transit from the fossil fuels era to a green economy with the use of renewable energy, this is an attempt to minimize the effect of global warming which occur due to war in the middle east, defunct USSR and as well as depletion of ozone layer which resulted from industrial revolution to this era of information revolution. Clean Renewable energy (CRE) proffers an essential panacea to the Structural Development Goal (SDP) problem. The motive of this study is to examine cohesively the growth rate renewable energy consumption to the (SDG) with respect to gross domestic product of west African countries. To achieve this laudable objective, the study employed a panel data Augmented Renewable Energy Solow growth model approach, obviously, the Solow growth model transforms Cobb Douglas production function.

The data used in the study were extracted from world bank database containing population, gross domestic products, gross fixed capital formation and renewable energy consumption for countries in west Africa. The period of study spanned between 2010 and 2022 across sixteen west Africa countries. A novel model named Augmented Solow growth model was proposed and adopted in the study. The findings of the study showed that renewable energy consumption and its allied variables contributed positively towards the SDG.