The Role of Renewable Energy in Advancing SDG 7: Ensuring Clean and Affordable Energy

The key challenge of the modern world is sustainable energy development, which matches traditional energy sources, leading to severe environmental and economic problems. Renewable energy sources (RES) are essential to reducing CO₂ emissions and increasing energy efficiency towards achieving SDG 7. The study aims to explore the impact of RES on affordable and clean energy, the development trends, and the main barriers to implementation. The method is based on statistical analysis, comparison, the content of scientific sources, and case studies of countries' political strategies. The results confirm that an increase in the share of RES in the global energy balance contributes to reducing dependence on fossil fuels, improving the environmental situation, and economic development. Several areas remain as main barriers, namely the high costs of RES initial investments, lack of infrastructure, and RES integration and regulatory restrictions. It was concluded that compelling government support and favourable political conditions tend to be associated with higher rates of RES implementation. In the study, one of the most practical values is determining the directions of political and economic support for RES to accelerate the energy transformation and the environmental load. The results obtained can also be used in developing state programmes to support RES and implement effective models for their integration into national energy systems.