The effects of energy efficiency, renewable energy and tourism development on the environment in Sub-Sahara Africa

Carbon emission (CE) is a major problem that has long caused great worry to world countries and world leaders. The United Nations (UN) brought the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aimed at achieving the carbon neutrality goal by 2030. CE is the major cause of global warming, diseases, and droughts. Various studies have been done, to examine the factors that exacerbate CE, including those factors that reduce it. Among the major factors that promote CE, tourism development has been largely blamed, but quite a few studies have been done to ascertain its impact. This research aims to ascertain the influence of tourism development and energy efficiency (EE) on CE, a study that has not been widely done, hence the originality of the research. The research also employs a large panel data set of 48 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) nations from 1990 to 2020. Cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributive lag (CS-ARDL) method, which is strong when dynamics, cross-sectional dependence (CD) and heterogeneity are present, and the dynamic panel data technique, which is strong over endogeneity are employed, hence robust outcomes are given. The research findings show that, EE and renewable energy (RE) negatively affect CE, while non-renewable energy (NRE) and economic growth (EG) positively affect CE. However, tourism arrivals do not affect CE in the SSA countries. Therefore, the use of fossil fuel should be discouraged, while RE consumption and EE should be promoted.