The impact of domestic materials and renewable energy consumption towards environmental sustainability: evidence from green growth policy across regional and global levels

This study examined the effect of green growth on environmental sustainability across 62 countries classified into regions and on a global scale. Domestic material consumption and renewable energy use were used as green growth indicators to examine their effect on CO₂ emission, which is the environmental degradation proxy. The recent panel estimators (cross-sectional augmented distributed lags, and common corrected effect mean group), difference-in-differences, and causalities were employed from 1980 to 2020. The findings revealed that green energy and domestic material consumption contribute to CO₂ depletion regionally and globally. The results also indicated that with the use of a green growth policy, there is a slight improvement in reducing CO₂ towards environmental sustainability across regions. Moreover, a two-way directional causal relationship between CO₂ and domestic material consumption and green energy was noted globally, and in some regions, while one-way directional and neutral causations have been supported in regions. This study, therefore, suggested the potential policy implications for global, regional, and country-specific environmental sustainability to achieve desired climate action effectively.