The world’s ever-increasing population, combined with economic and technological growth and a new, modern way of life, has led to high energy demand and consumption. Fossil fuels have been the main energy source for many years, but their use has many negative impacts on the environment. This has made the transition to renewable energy sources necessary in order to address climate change and meet the 1.5 °C goal. This paper is a review of the different types of renewables, their potentials and limitations, and their connection to climate change, economic growth, and human health. It also examines consumers’ willingness to pay for renewables in different countries, based on the existing literature. IEA (International Energy Agency) data are analyzed, concerning renewables’ current use, the evolution of their usage, and forecasts about their future usage. Finally, policies and strategies are recommended in order to address climate change and fully integrate renewables as a sustainable energy source.

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Energy is required for socioeconomic development, and the world’s energy needs have significantly increased in the last decades. The lack of energy can have severe impacts on a person’s well-being; therefore, energy access should be ensured for everyone in the world. Energy poverty usually refers to a situation where a household cannot be kept adequately warm, but it is a complex issue with many more aspects. This paper aims to present a comprehensive review of the energy poverty problem, particularly presenting various definitions given in the literature that capture the multi-dimensional nature of the problem and analyzing the different ways of measuring energy poverty (expenditure approach and consensual approach). In addition, the impacts of the problem are identified, including health, socioeconomic, and environmental impacts, as well as the drivers that can worsen energy poverty conditions, such as several household characteristics and various socioeconomic and environmental factors. The situation occurring currently in the world is also presented, including studies that focus on different world regions, and the different solutions that can help address the problem are discussed, including changes to the living environments and the use of new technologies.

Our industrialized world highly depends on fossil fuels to cover its energy needs. Although fossil fuels have been linked with economic growth, their use has also been found to have severe impacts on the environment. The linkages among carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption and economic growth have been extensively examined in the current literature. The present study focuses on electricity production from fossil fuels, as well as from renewable sources and examines their linkages with CO2 emissions and economic growth in 119 world countries of different income levels, by assessing Granger causality. In addition, the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis is tested, in order to evaluate whether economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions are linked with an inverse U-shaped relationship and with an N-shape relationship in higher income levels. The EKC hypothesis is confirmed for high income and upper-middle income countries, but not for lower-middle and low income levels and a bidirectional Granger causality is found between GDP per capita and CO2 per capita in all income levels.