Energy security, environmental policies, and environmental Kuznets Curve for renewable energy development

Renewable Energy. 2025. Vol. 251. Article 123336.

Tishchenko I., Egorova Y., Vakulenko E.

Renewable energy (RE) growth is a critical factor for the sustainable future of the world. We investigate the key determinants of RE development, such as economic development, energy security, and environmental policies. We study unbalanced panel data with a time span from 1970 till 2020 across 58 countries. We test three hypotheses: (1) U-shape relationship between RE and economic development (GDP per capita), i.e., the reversal to Environmental Kuznets Curve; (2) a negative correlation between RE development and energy security; (3) a positive correlation between stringency of the environmental policies and RE. We applied regression analysis on panel data and semi-parametric modeling to test our hypotheses. New energy security variable was created to evaluate hydrocarbons self-sufficiency for each country. Our study confirms a U-shape relationship between RE and economic development. Within hypothesis 2, we expect a negative correlation between self-sufficiency in hydrocarbons and RE development. This was confirmed in a full sample and supports the hypothesis of the “lobby effect”. Environmental Policies Support (EPS) gives positive correlation between stringency of measures, and RE which confirms our initial hypothesis 3. We conclude with recommendations on how to accelerate RE development based on our research.

Keywords: renewable energy, Environmental Kuznets Curve, energy security, Environmental Policy Stringency Indicator