CAUSAL MECHANISM OF RENEWABLE ENERGY, AIR QUALITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

Environmental processes, development and sustainability are threatened by the impact of air pollutants on global climate change. On the other hand, the impact of renewable energy use on emission reduction policies is attracting increasing attention worldwide. It has also become a critical challenge for countries to use appropriate energy sources, which cause less environmental problems, to improve economic growth. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the causal relationship between air quality, economic growth and renewable energy consumption. To this end, a panel causality analysis was conducted for 38 OECD countries between 1990 and 2020, taking into account the availability of data sets and variables. According to the results obtained from the analysis, it was concluded that the variable GDP per capita is the cause of the environmental performance indicator PM2.5 variable expressing air quality, that there is a reciprocal causality relationship between renewable energy consumption and the variable GDP per capita and, finally, that renewable energy consumption is the cause of the variable PM2.5 and the results obtained were evaluated accordingly.