Risk to investment and renewables production in the United States: An inference for environmental sustainability

Abstract

With the increasing drive toward cleaner environment, accessing lower risk investment with financing opportunities has remained a pertinent hurdle to achieving a paradigm shift from the business-as-usual approaches to a responsible climate actions and environmental awareness. On this note, the current study examined for the first time the impact of the risk to investment on environmental quality over the period of 1984–2017 for the case of the United States. Considering that the burning of fuels constitutes the largest source of Greenhouse gas in the United States, this study employed energy carbon emissions both as a proxy for environmental quality and dependent variable. The real Gross Domestic Product and renewable energy production were both incorporated in the carbon function model as an additional explanatory variable that was examined by a handful of empirical tools. Importantly, the study found that an associated lower risk to investment is a suitable and significant approach toward improving the quality of the environment in both the short and long run. Similarly, the production and utilization of renewable energy exhibits a statistically significant and desirable impact on environmental quality i.e renewable energy production and utilization improves environmental quality. However, the study found that economic expansion significantly spur hindrance to environmental sustainability. This study justifies that risk associated with all investment aspects is fundamental to environmental quality, and thus posing an indirect health and socioeconomic concerns. Additionally, the result proved that the circumstance of renewable energy waste and energy loss to transmission arising production-consumption disparity is negligible. Moreover, the robustness and diagnostic test affirms the validity of the investigation. Thus, this study proffers a relevant policy mechanism toward the attainment of the country’s sustainable development goals via cleaner productivity, especially from the perspective of associated risks in public and private low-carbon and clean technologies financing.