Облік і фінанси (Mar 2024)
The Effect of Clean Energy Financial Investment on Carbon Reduction
Abstract
Accounting and finance are intricately intertwined with the global quest for environmental sustainability by applying accounting and finance tools for carbon reduction initiatives. Clean energy financial investment is one of the many alternative tools through which accounting contributes to carbon reduction. Accordingly, this paper analysed the impact of separate and integrated clean energy investment alternatives on carbon reduction. Data on clean energy financial investment and carbon emission per capita were collected from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and Our World in Data archives, respectively. Data was analysed by using multiple pooled OLS to evaluate the impact of individual clean energy financial investments on carbon reduction and the impact of integrating the various clean energy financial investment alternatives on carbon reduction separately. Findings show that individual clean energy financial investments may not separately offer desired carbon reduction, hence, albeit some negative coefficients, individual clean investments showed no significant impact on carbon reduction. However, furthering the test by pooling all the clean energy financial investment alternatives shows a significant negative effect of clean energy financial investment on carbon reduction at a P-value of 0.05. This shows that an integration of different alternatives of clean energy financial investment may offer an enhanced reduction of carbon emission, which outweighs the effect of relying on a single clean energy investment alternative. The findings offer significant insight for policy makers’ future strategies towards a combination of multiple clean energy financial investments. Furthermore, the findings from this paper are a further testament that accounting and finance are connected with the global quest for environmental sustainability through the application of accounting and financial investment tools in conducting clean energy financial investment.
Keywords
