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The intensification of countries' growth causes the depletion of natural resources, biodiversity degradation, ecological imbalances, damage, and disasters. The aggravation of ecological issues requires the development of mechanisms for simultaneous achievement of economic, social, and ecological goals. The energy sector is the core direction of economic decarbonization. Therefore, green economic growth requires economic development due to the extension of innovative technologies for renewable energies and relevant investment for that. The study aims to test the hypothesis on the impact of green field investment on green economic growth. The object of the research was countries in the European Union (EU) for 2006–2020. This study applied the Malmquist-Luenberger Global Productivity Index to estimate green economic growth. It considers the resources available for the production process in the country (labor, capital, energy), the desired outcome (gross domestic product) and undesirable results (emissions to the environment) of this process. The study applied the Tobit model to test the hypothesis. The findings confirm the spatial heterogeneity of green economic growth among the EU countries. The asymmetry in technological efficiency and progress limits the efficacy of green innovations. At the same time, the obtained data confirm the research hypothesis. It is shown that along with green investments, economic openness and the efficiency of public governance have a positive effect on the green economic growth of countries. The findings highlight the importance of attracting green investments to increase green innovations in renewable energy, which boost green economic growth. This study explored the linear and direct effects of green investment on the green economic growth while eliminating the transmission impact of other mediating factors. It should be noted that further research should analyze the nonlinear impact of green investment on the green economic growth and the mediating effect, which could be caused by other variables (corruption, governance efficiency, green innovations, etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]