The Effect of Renewable Energy, Technological Innovations and Export Quality on the Emission of CO2

The concepts of climate change and global warming have been widely considered as a major concern for the survival of living organisms on the planet. Since environmental and economic activities have coexisted since the beginning of Earth's history, development activities have gradually destroyed the environment by increasing CO2 emissions. Due to the lack of appropriate political initiatives, the earth is now facing the problem of adverse consequences of environmental vulnerability and destruction, which is causing suffering to the lives of humans, animals and plants worldwide. Therefore, reducing CO2 emissions to build a green and sustainable earth by considering various contributing factors such as renewable energy, technological innovation, export quality, and economic growth has become a desirable goal for contemporary researchers, as well as limited studies on the impact They are done.

In this research, in order to investigate the effects of renewable energy consumption variables, research and development cost (representative of technological innovation variable), export quality, which is one of the main and explanatory variables, and economic growth is one of the explanatory and controlling variables on CO2 emission. The econometric model derived from the research of Rahman et al(2022) uses and is specified as follows:〖(〖CO〗_2)〗_it=〖(RED)〗_it+〖(EQI)〗_it+〖(REC)〗_it+〖(GDP)〗_it+〖(U)〗_it REC: renewable energy consumption; RED: technological innovation; EQI: export quality (except the main variables); CO2: dependent variable; GDP: economic growth (except control variable); i: sections (countries); t: time; U (it ) except error The geographical scope of the current research is 20 countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during the period of 2000-2020 and the evaluation of the independent variables of the research on CO2 emissions using the econometric model Panel ARDL There have been. Various studies have shown that ARDL models have several advantages over some other models. First, when the sample size is small, the estimation results will be reliable. Another thing is that this method can be used without considering the accumulation of zero or one degree of variables (Bhutto & Chang, 2019), while conventional models such as VECM or VAR can only be used in certain conditions. used that the variables have the same clustering degree (Chang et al., 2020). The third advantage of using the ARDL method is that it is possible to derive the ECM equation based on it. Fourth, in ARDL models, the issue of endogeneity creates the least problem. Because in these models there is no correlation in the error component (Pesaran et al, 2001). Of course, it should be noted that in addition to all the advantages, the problem of ARDL methods is that if the variables are cumulative of the second degree, they cannot be used. Based on this and considering the mentioned advantages, in the current research, the family of ARDL models has been used to estimate the coefficients.

It is well known that greenhouse gases (GHGs) are required to keep the Earth's temperature at levels so as to sustain life. However, increasing amounts of GHG emissions due to man-made activities, such as burning fossil fuels, absorb heat and cause global warming, giving rise to changes in the climate system. Arguably, this is one of the greatest problems humanity is facing today.Current study examines the role of factors affecting the reduction of CO2 emissions in 20 MENA countries in the period of 2002-2020. The data has been extracted from the websites of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The results using the ARDL-PMG econometric technique show that the consumption of renewable energy, the quality of exports, and the cost of research and development have had a negative and significant impact on the emission of CO2. The control variable of economic growth has had a positive and significant effect on CO2 emissions. The PMG estimation results show that in the short term, REC, EQI, RED have caused a decrease of 0.0219, 0.1208 and 0.06352 respectively in CO2 emission, while GDP has caused an increase of 0.2604 in carbon dioxide emission. . Also, based on the long-term estimation results, REC, EQI, RED have caused a decrease of 0.0451, 0.3211 and 0.01211 respectively in CO2 emission. While the control variable of GDP has caused an increase of 0.3722 in CO2 emission. The results of the variables are the same in both short and long-term periods and only differ in the size of the influence of the coefficients. So that all REC, EQI, RED variables have had a negative and significant impact on CO2 emissions in the short and long term, and the control variable GDP has had a positive and significant impact on carbon dioxide emissions in the short and long term. Among all the variables of the research, the highest influence coefficient related to the GDP variable is 0.3722 in the long term and the lowest is RED, 0.01211 in the long term. Also, Granger causality test one-way causality from renewable energy consumption to CO2 emission, one-way causality from export quality to CO2 emission, one-way causality from research and development cost to CO2 emission and also causality They confirm one-way from economic growth to CO2 emission. Research with the results of studies such as Masoudi et al. (2018), Wang et al.,(2021), Saidi, K., & Omri, (2020), Hasnisah et al.,(2019) ., Ding et al.,(2021) and Salari et al., (2021) Correspond.Based on the obtained results, the following suggestions are presented:Implementation of inclusive economic growth and development activities without harming the environment by adopting and investing in green technology, green urbanization and green industrialization.According to the results of the research on the significant reduction in CO2 emissions during the use of renewable energy, it is necessary to take measures with more investment to increase the sources of renewable energy and support solar and wind energy by providing incentive policies and for the long term, it should be done. A suitable energy policy should be developed and implemented.Technological innovation helps introduce more environmentally and energy efficient technologies and equipment by increasing spending on scientific research and development. Appropriate policy initiatives are needed to invest more in technological innovations on a priority basis.Considering that export quality has a reducing effect on CO2 emissions, policy makers and investors should consider product quality as a key factor when designing. In this regard, increasing the level of physical investment (construction of railways and highways) and the amount of human capital investment (education) as well as foreign direct investment (FDI) can improve the quality of exports.