Reducing carbon emissions while ensuring inclusive and sustainable development remains a central policy challenge, particularly amid global transitions toward renewable energy and gender-inclusive governance. While renewable energy adoption is widely recognized as a key mitigation strategy, far less is known about how its emissions-reducing effects are conditioned by institutional, socio-political, and globalization-related factors—especially those linked to women's empowerment. This study examines how renewable energy consumption (REN) interacts with environmental taxation, female education, women's political participation, and economic globalization to influence CO 2 emissions. Using an unbalanced panel of 97 countries (43 developed and 54 developing) over the period 1994–2021, the study employs advanced panel econometric techniques that explicitly account for cross-sectional dependence, heterogeneity, and dynamic adjustments. After testing for cross-sectional dependence, slope heterogeneity, unit roots, and cointegration, short- and long-run relationships are estimated using the Dynamic Common Correlated Effects Autoregressive Distributed Lag (DCCE-ARDL) model. In addition, Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel Granger causality tests are applied to explore the direction of causal linkages among key variables. The results reveal pronounced heterogeneity across countries. In developed economies, a 1% increase in renewable energy consumption reduces CO 2 emissions by 0.29% in the short run and 0.43% in the long run. Moreover, the emissions-mitigating effect of renewable energy is significantly amplified when complemented by supportive institutional and socio-economic conditions, including environmental taxation (0.16%), female education (0.22%), women's political participation (0.10%), and economic globalization (0.25%). In developing economies, renewable energy exerts a substantially stronger short-run impact, with a 1% increase lowering emissions by 1.05%, although long-run effects are weaker and less stable. Among the conditioning factors, female education emerges as the most robust and consistent channel, strengthening the emissions-reducing impact of renewable energy by approximately 0.31% in both the short and long run. Environmental taxation and economic globalization contribute modestly to emissions reduction, while women's political participation plays a comparatively limited role. Overall, the findings demonstrate that renewable energy policies are most effective when embedded within gender-inclusive human capital development, supportive fiscal instruments, and enabling institutional frameworks. The study offers important policy insights for governments and international organizations by highlighting that accelerating the clean energy transition alone is insufficient; complementary investments in women's education, inclusive governance, and coherent environmental taxation are crucial for achieving sustained and equitable low-carbon development. • Renewables cut CO 2 more in developing nations than in developed ones. • Female education strengthens emission cuts from renewable energy use. • Environmental taxes boost renewables' role in lowering CO 2 emissions. • GDP growth raises CO 2 , but renewables and education help offset it. • Gender-focused renewable policies speed up global emission reduction.
Behera et al. (Thu,) studied this question.