Impact of green energy policies on sustainable standards of living in South Africa: An ARDL and Toda-Yamamoto approach

Abstract

This article investigates the long-term relationship between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)of the United Nations and green energy in South Africa. It explains long-term impact of green energy policies of government on educational quality, agricultural development, unemployment rate and per capitagross domestic product. Autoregressive distributed lag-bound testing and Toda-Yamamoto approaches were applied to the data between 1994 and 2016. The results revealed a significant positive relationship between green energy, agricultural growth, and educational quality. Bidirectional causality between green energy policy variables, educational quality and agricultural growth are confirmed, while the impact on unemployment is yet to be established and the impact on wealth remains insignificant