Wind energy, industrial-economic development and CO2 emissions nexus: Do droughts matter?

This study empirically explored the nexus of wind energy (with regards to the effect of the drought), industrial-economic development, and emitted CO2 in 41 World's top countries in wind energy consumption from 1997 to 2018. Cross-sectional augmented distributed lag estimators (CS-DL, CS-ARDL, CCE-P) and newly updated estimation packages to effectively assess the relationships between variables. Our results are the following: First, severe droughts were not a significant matter in wind energy, and consuming wind energy reasonably contributes to reducing emitted CO2, while industrial and economic development positively promotes CO2 emissions in sampled countries. Second, industrial development significantly promotes economic growth, while wind energy use has an insignificant positive effect on economic growth. Moreover, wind energy negatively affects industrial development. Third, two-way directional causal relationships were noted between CO2 and other covariates, this hypothesis was also noted between industrial development and economic growth and wind energy use. We, therefore, suggested policy implications to reduce CO2 across the globe and country-specific and consider the positive effect of wind energy on growth.