The dynamic linkages among environment, sustainable growth, and energy from waste in the circular economy of EU countries

Abstract

Understanding energy security, climate change, and sustainable development are the critical developmental challenges of EU countries nowadays. Thus, this study aims to assess the linkage of these issues and investigate the role of energy from waste to sustain economic growth and environmental development. 18 European countries are considered and divided into two groups: the high sustainable development and the low sustainable development groups. The Panel Vector-Autoregressive (PVAR) model is employed to achieve our purposed. The results reveal strong evidence for a bidirectional causality between greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth in high SDI countries and bidirectional causality waste to energy and economic growth in low SDI countries. Moreover, we find that waste-to-energy is the key factor reducing the emission in the high SDI European countries; however, it contributes a negative effect on the economic development in low SDI European countries