Assessing the nexus between human capital, green energy, and load capacity factor: Policymaking for achieving sustainable development goals

Climate control is one of the important targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which along with other SDGs plays an imperative role in environmental sustainability strategies. Recently, studies on the driving forces of climate change and environmental quality focus on using environmental indicators like CO2 and ecological footprint (EF). Evidently, CO2 emissions have been criticized on the ground that they cannot indicate environmental deterioration to a large extent. EF also focuses only on the consumption of resources and overlooks biocapacity (supply side). The adoption of green energy, which is the fundamental agenda of SDG 7, is the most practical solution toward energy transition and controlling fossil fuel consumption. Also, human-induced environmental challenges require considering factors like education and awareness to cultivate a green society. Against this background, this study employs the load capacity factor (LCF), which considers both supply and demand sides to gauge the environmental quality, and inspects the human capital (HUC), green energy (GEN), and environmental quality nexus using the data from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) from 1986 to 2018 in the context of the load capacity curve (LCC) hypothesis. Results of the cross-sectionally augmented ARDL, robust to heterogeneity, fractional integration, endogeneity, and cross-sectional dependence (CSD), established that the load capacity curve holds in the context of ASEAN. Thus, achieving a higher income level will support ASEAN to expand LCF and increase environmental quality. HUC is found to expand LCF and promote environmental quality. Similarly, green energy is found to stimulate LCF. However, population density and economic globalization expand environmental deterioration. The paper is concluded by providing detailed policies to enhance environmental quality.