The Effects of Energy Transition and Environmental Policy Stringency Subtypes on Ecological Footprint: Evidence from BRICS Countries via a KRLS Approach

作者：Mustafa Tevfik Kartal, Arshian Sharif, Cosimo Magazzino, Shahriyar Mukhtarov, Derviş Kırıkkaleli · 发表于：Engineering · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.eng.2025.02.007 · 被引用次数：29 · 研究领域：Energy, Environment, Economic Growth、Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies、Energy and Environment Impacts

The world has been facing climate-related problems in recent decades, resulting from environmental degradation, making it increasingly critical to reduce environmental degradation in order to combat climate change. In this context, transforming economies into eco-friendly ones, ensuring the global energy transition from fossil-fuel-based power to renewable energy, and applying stringent environmental policies have been recent focus points of policymakers. Accordingly, this study analyzes the marginal effect of the energy transition, market- and non-market-based environmental policy stringency, and income on ecological footprint (EFP) in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries using data between 2000 and 2020 and applying a kernel-based regularized least-squares (KRLS) approach. The results show that ① economic growth has a stimulating marginal effect on EFP in BRICS countries except for Brazil, where it has an insignificant effect; ② energy transition efforts are ineffective in all countries, having the undesired effect of increasing EFP; ③ market-based environmental policies have a curbing effect on EFP in Brazil, Russia, and India but an increasing effect in China and an insignificant effect in South Africa; ④ non-market-based environmental policies are highly ineffective in all countries; ⑤ the KRLS approach exhibits excellent performance in the estimation of EFP, reaching approximately 99.61%; and ⑥ the marginal effect of the studied factors on EF...