In accordance with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Kyoto protocol and the United Nations Sustainable development goals (UNSDGs) on climate action (SDG-13), there has been a need across economies for transition from fossil-fuel-based energy sources such as coal energy consumption to cleaner energy options i.e., a transition to a low-carbon economy. To this end, the present study explores the asymmetric relationship between coal energy consumption, economic growth, rising urban population and emission level in South Africa. The present study span is conducted on an annual frequency basis from 1965-2018. This study applies the novel Non-linear Autoregressive distributed lag methodology (NARDL) for the highlighted variables. Empirical results validate the asymmetric relationship between the variables under review over the study period. The NARDL regression further shows positive shock by GDP increases CO2 emission level while negative impact affects otherwise in the long run. On the other hand, coal consumption positive shock exhibits a detrimental impact on environmental quality in South Africa. This is insightful for policymakers. The urban population shows non-significant effect on emission levels over the sampled period. The knowledge of both positive and negative shock effects of GDP, coal energy consumption and urban growth is vital for policy construction in terms of both economic and environmental sustainability. Thus, policy prescription ranges from energy transition to alternative and cleaner energy sources like renewables and responsible energy consumption (SDG-12) should be pursued in South Africa. More far-reaching environmental policies are highlighted in the concluding section.

The status of crude oil in the global energy mix shows that crude oil is the most sought after energy source worldwide. Saudi Arabia is an important crude oil exporting nation heavily dependent on its crude oil revenue—which dominates the energy mix in the country. The quest for energy production from fossil in Saudi Arabia by directly burning crude oil for electricity power generation have negative impact on industrial production in the Kingdom with significant cost implication and the adverse effect on the environment. Employing the Markov switching regression model, our simulation confirms the negative impact of crude oil price volatility for the industrial sector return in Saudi Arabia. An energy intensity target for the industrial sector and the diversification of energy source will help ensure the elimination of waste in the production and consumption of energy in the Kingdom—boosting energy efficiency in general with diminishing production cost.

The empirical connection between anthropogenic climate changes, aggregate production index, primary energy consumption, population dynamics, capital formation, and real per capita income in India is investigated in this study. The equilibrium long-run relationship among the studied variables and their causality are analysed using the theoretical framework of Cobb Douglas's production function. The study used a time series data set from 1965 to 2018 as part of a novel bound testing methodology strongly backed up by the classical cointegration techniques. As a result, the model's short- and long-run relationships are estimated. The estimation reveals long-run equilibrium convergence between anthropogenic climate change and the remaining exogenous factors empirically examined. Consequently, the aggregated production index, real domestic investment, and real economic growth have both short-run and long-run positive impact in the estimated model. The findings revealed further that primary energy use is the leading cause of anthropogenic climate change, causing changes to real domestic investment and population. A significant policy recommendation, among others, is a faster transition to cleaner energy to combat anthropogenic climate change, owing to India's extremely high energy intensity power sector with massive primary energy consumption.