TY - JOUR
T1 - Foreign Direct Investments, Renewable Electricity Output, and Ecological Footprints
T2 - Do Financial Globalization Facilitate Renewable Energy Transition and Environmental Welfare in Bangladesh?
AU - Murshed, Muntasir
AU - Elheddad, Mohamed
AU - Ahmed, Rizwan
AU - Bassim, Mohga
AU - Than, Ei Thuzar
N1 - Funding Information:
Henderson’s personal and collaborative research accomplishments alone would be ample for most investigators; however, he managed a superlative encore in the form of the Extramural Grant Program (EGP) after he took on the research administrative responsibility in Baxter Corporation. To put this program in context, we need to return to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when funding from the NIH, especially for chronic renal failure and dialysis research, was restricted. That was a difficult era for the NIH, after nearly a decade of government down-sizing and before the legislature decided that medical research was a high priority for federal spending. The NIH was trying to maintain existing programs, but there were insufficient funds to support new initiatives or young investigators. Into this breach came the EGP, which for nearly a decade, and long after the NIH drought eased, provided research dollars to worthwhile investigative initiatives in Nephrology. Research proposals for the EGP were reviewed by an independent board of reputable nephrologists and biomedical engineers. The review process of the EGP was impartial and noncommercial. The criterion for funding was scientific excellence. The result of the program was impressive. Through one decade after its initiation, the EGP dispersed $25 million for >700 projects in 22 countries, resulting in >700 publications, with an average impact factor of 4.9. The success of the program hinged substantially on Henderson’s insight, creativity, leadership, and knowledge of the field, personnel, and academic environment.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/3/1
Y1 - 2022/3/1
N2 - Phasing out fossil fuel dependency to adopt renewable energy technologies is pertinent for both ensuring energy security and for safeguarding the well-being of the environment. However, financial constraints often restrict the developing countries, in particular, from undergoing the renewable energy transition that is necessary for easing the environmental hardships. Against this background, this study makes a novel attempt to evaluate the impacts of FDI inflows on enhancing renewable energy use and attaining environmental sustainability in Bangladesh between 1972 and 2015. Using the autoregressive distributed lags with structural break approach to estimate the short- and long-run elasticities, it is found that FDI inflows enhance the share of renewable electricity output in the total electricity output levels of the country. Besides, FDI inflows are also evidenced to directly hamper environmental quality by boosting the ecological footprints figures of Bangladesh. Hence, it can be said that FDI promotes renewable electricity generation in Bangladesh but transforms the nation into a pollution haven. However, although FDI inflows cannot directly reduce the ecological footprints, a joint ecological footprint mitigation impact of FDI inflows and renewable electricity generation is evidenced. Besides, the findings also verify the authenticity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in Bangladesh’s context. Therefore, economic growth can be referred to as being both the cause and the panacea to the environmental problems faced by Bangladesh. These results, in a nutshell, calls for effective measures to be undertaken for attracting the relatively cleaner FDI in Bangladesh whereby the objectives of renewable energy transition and environmental sustainability can be achieved in tandem. In line with these findings, several appropriate financial globalization policies are recommended.
AB - Phasing out fossil fuel dependency to adopt renewable energy technologies is pertinent for both ensuring energy security and for safeguarding the well-being of the environment. However, financial constraints often restrict the developing countries, in particular, from undergoing the renewable energy transition that is necessary for easing the environmental hardships. Against this background, this study makes a novel attempt to evaluate the impacts of FDI inflows on enhancing renewable energy use and attaining environmental sustainability in Bangladesh between 1972 and 2015. Using the autoregressive distributed lags with structural break approach to estimate the short- and long-run elasticities, it is found that FDI inflows enhance the share of renewable electricity output in the total electricity output levels of the country. Besides, FDI inflows are also evidenced to directly hamper environmental quality by boosting the ecological footprints figures of Bangladesh. Hence, it can be said that FDI promotes renewable electricity generation in Bangladesh but transforms the nation into a pollution haven. However, although FDI inflows cannot directly reduce the ecological footprints, a joint ecological footprint mitigation impact of FDI inflows and renewable electricity generation is evidenced. Besides, the findings also verify the authenticity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in Bangladesh’s context. Therefore, economic growth can be referred to as being both the cause and the panacea to the environmental problems faced by Bangladesh. These results, in a nutshell, calls for effective measures to be undertaken for attracting the relatively cleaner FDI in Bangladesh whereby the objectives of renewable energy transition and environmental sustainability can be achieved in tandem. In line with these findings, several appropriate financial globalization policies are recommended.
KW - Renewable energy
KW - Renewable electricity
KW - FDI
KW - Ecological footprints
KW - Pollution haven hypothesis
KW - EKC hypothesis
KW - Structural breaks
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85105140930&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10690-021-09335-7
DO - 10.1007/s10690-021-09335-7
M3 - Article
VL - 29
SP - 33
EP - 78
JO - Asia-Pacific Financial Markets
JF - Asia-Pacific Financial Markets
SN - 1380-2011
IS - 1
ER -
