Since the inception of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Next 11 (N11) countries are facing difficulties in attaining the SDG objectives, as maintaining the environmental quality has been a challenge for them. In this study, we have revisited the technology policies of these countries, and in doing so, we have tried to address the problem of environmental degradation, while addressing the issues of sustained economic growth, clean and affordable energy, and quality education. In this pursuit, we have designed two indices for environmental degradation and technological advancement, and then analyzed the association between them following the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. The empirical analysis has been done by IPAT framework, and by using bootstrapped quantile regression and rolling window heterogeneous panel casualty tests, over a period of 1990-2017. Following the results obtained from the analysis, we have tried to address the objectives of SDG 13,

Designing a comprehensive policy framework for ascertaining sustainable development is a problem faced by most of the countries around the globe, and the developed nations are no exception to that. Environmental awareness-oriented policy design for achieving sustainable development goals is a challenge for the developed nations, and there lies the contribution of this study. This study analyzes the impact of renewable energy on carbon emissions, in presence of education, natural resource abundance, foreign direct investment, and economic growth for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries over the period of 1990-2015. Second generation methodologies are adapted for the empirical estimation. The results show the stimulating role of renewable energy consumption in shaping environmental quality. Education declines carbon emissions. Natural resource abundance and foreign direct investment deteriorate environmental quality. Moreover, the time series individual country analysis also confirms that renewable energy has a positive impact on economic growth. The heterogeneous causality analysis reveals the feedback effect, i.e., bidirectional causal associations among carbon emissions, education, and renewable energy consumption. This empirical evidence suggests that countries should increase investment in education and renewable energy sectors and plan for research and development in renewable energy for ensuring environmental sustainability.

This study investigates the impact of corruption in public sector on carbon emissions in presence of energy use segregation, following the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) framework. The study has been carried out for Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) and Next 11 countries over the period of 1990-2017. Along with the finding of inverted N-shaped EKC for both the cases, we find that incidents of corruption enhance environmental degradation by reducing the positive impact of renewable energy consumption on environmental quality, and increasing the negative impact of fossil fuel consumption. This study has also divulged that the corruptive practices are more prone in case of the countries, where the development is mature and institutionalization is more stringent. Based on these findings, we suggest that environmental policies should take account of the corruption, and thereby, making the policies more robust and effective.

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Numerous studies on the causal relationship between economic growth, energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have shown divergence in policy recommendations, which arises mainly due to the choice of methodology and the period of study. This inconclusiveness in policy prescriptions might turn out to be critical, when the renewable energy policies of the developing nations are considered. Our study analyses the causal relationship between economic growth, carbon emissions, fossil fuel and renewable energy consumption in Next 11 countries during the period of 1990-2016. Along with conducting parametric and non-parametric causality tests together, introducing the Geweke (1982) causality test in the literature of energy economics, we attempt to establish a wholesome aspect of policy design, by comparing and complementing results of different causality analysis, and how the causality directions should comply with the context setting. Our empirical evidence confirms that robust renewable energy policy can be designed by complementing the various causality test results, rather than focusing on one particular causality test.