The impact of renewable energy on economic growth in the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP)

ABSTRACT The past decade has seen an increase in renewable energy sources in the energy mix due to global environmental and supply security concerns. This paper aimed to investigate renewable energy effects on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP). The investigation is from 1988 to 2018, using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), Nonlinear ARDL (NARDL), and fully modified OLS (FMOL) techniques. Based on empirical analyses of ARDL and FMOLS, it was found that both renewable and nonrenewable energies have a positive impact on economic growth in the Southern African power pool. However, the NARDL estimation indicates that neither renewable nor nonrenewable energy has a significant effect on economic growth in Southern African power pool. Therefore, based on the findings from both ARDL and FMOLS, the growth hypothesis is supported regarding the connection between renewable energy and economic growth in the Southern Africa power pool. Centered on the results, some policy implications were drawn for SAPP for sustainable economic growth, which includes measures to increase renewable energy in the energy mix, and also to encourage the optimization of cross-border connections where energy production from countries within SAPP that are not restricted by natural resources can be relied on to export sustainable energy. Additionally, building a more sustainable integrated power system in the region will assist SAPP with sustainable energy access and reduce the dependence on nonrenewable energy within the interconnected countries soon.