Clean energy, institutional quality and environmental sustainability in sub-Saharan Africa

This study examines the impact of clean energy and institutional quality on environmental sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa. System generalized method of moments (GMM) is used as the estimation strategy. A sample of 45 countries is considered from 2008 to 2020. The result reveals a negative and significant relationship between renewable energy consumption and CO2 emissions. This implies that clean energy improves environmental sustainability. Furthermore, the initial result of the link between most indicators of institutional quality and CO2 emissions is not significant. However, the finding of the interaction of renewable energy and institutional quality indicators reveals a positive relationship between institutional quality indicators and CO2 emissions, suggesting that complementing renewable energy with institutional quality will increase CO2 emissions. The implication of this finding is that further strengthening of institutional quality will be required as a useful policy instrument to mitigate long-run environmental degradation in the region