Exploring the prospect of green growth in human developmentally augmented energy efficiency estimates

Purpose The study aims to amalgamate social welfare aspects into energy efficiency estimations and see the effect of green energy growth on these estimates. Design/methodology/approach This study measures and compares energy efficiencies by a combination of economic, human development and environmental aspects of countries classified into advanced economies, emerging market economies and low-income developing countries using data envelopment analysis from 2001 to 2022. Panel data regressions and bootstrapped panel quantile regressions are used to estimate the effect of green growth. Findings Energy efficiency of advanced economies could be accelerated by green growth, while it was not effective for others. Energy-related tax revenue and R&D expenditures were helpful in advanced economies, while R&D was mostly not useful in other country-groups probably because of innovations without environmental focus. Economic freedom helped emerging markets, but an increase in manufacturing sector had detrimental effects. Research limitations/implications Advanced economies in the lower and medium quantiles are mostly in the falling portion of the inverted-U of environmental Kuznets curve by cleaner technology adoption, while emerging markets are in the rising portion of the curve because more renewable supply is not able to overcome the negative effect of their higher emissions. Originality/value Energy efficiency has always been analyzed from economic and environmental perspectives. Inclusion of human developmental dimension and how renewables can be influential in energy efficiency enhancements provide novelty to the study.