The impact of natural gas, biomass, and energy from waste on CO2 and PM2.5 emissions in the UK: Does eco-innovation matter?

The UK has made notable progress in transitioning to clean energy. However, due to the intermittency of some renewables such as wind and solar, the UK still relies on conventional fuels such as natural gas and low-carbon renewables like biomass and energy from municipal solid waste (MSW). Nevertheless, empirical evidence remains unclear whether these energy sources support or obstruct the UK's endeavours to reach its net-zero emissions goal. This research aims to examine the effect of eco-innovation, natural gas, biomass and energy recovery from MSW on CO2 emissions and PM2.5 concentrations using UK data from 1990 to 2022. We utilised the novel Dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag (DYNARDL) simulation to examine our empirical models. Our findings indicate that natural gas raises CO2 and PM2.5 levels, while eco-innovation mitigates these impacts. Biomass reduces CO2 emissions but has a minimal effect on air quality. In contrast, our study shows that MSW energy recovery increases CO2 emissions but reduces PM2.5 concentrations. Our Kernel-based regularised least squares (KRLS) and other robustness tests validated these results. The current study underscores the significance of accelerating the phase-out of fossil fuels, encouraging eco-innovation, and investing in non-intermittent renewables to support the UK's energy security and net-zero ambitions.