The impact of energy efficiency in reducing environmental degradation: does renewable energy and forest resources matter?

The vast utilisation of energy sources in promoting economic growth has been identified as the major cause of environmental degradation (through carbon emission). Therefore, the efficient utilisation of energy ensuring the minimisation of any wastages is vital in reducing environmental degradation. The current research aims to investigate the importance of energy efficiency, forest resources, and renewable energy in reducing environmental degradation. The major novelty of the research is that it seeks to investigate the impact of forest resources and energy efficiency on carbon emissions. Literature shows that there is still a dearth on the association of forest resources and energy efficiency, with carbon emissions. We employ data of the European Union countries for the time frame ranging from 1990 to 2020. The CS-ARDL technique depicts that raising GDP by 1% raises carbon emissions by 5.62% in the short run and 2.93% in the long run, raising renewable energy by 1 unit reduces carbon emissions by 0.098 and 0.03 units in the short and long run, respectively, whilst raising energy efficiency by 1% reduces carbon emissions by 6.29% and 3.29% in the short and long run, respectively. The Fixed Effect and Random Effect tools support the outcomes of the CS-ARDL tool on the negative effect of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and the positive effect of GDP on carbon emissions, and also depict that raising non-renewable energy by a single unit raises carbon emissions by 0.07 and 0.08 units, respectively. Forest resources, in this present research, do not significantly impact the emissions of carbon amongst the European nations.