CO(2) behavior amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom: The role of renewable and non-renewable energy development

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic since the end of 2019 has forced an unprecedented lockdown worldwide, and environmental quality was significantly affected by the pandemic and its induced lockdown. The objective of this study is to examine the role of renewable energy, non-renewable energy and COVID-19 case on CO(2) emission in the context of United Kingdom. Several non-linear techniques such as Fourier ADL cointegration test, Non-Linear ARDL, Markov switching regression, and Breitung and Candelon (BC) causality test are employed to attain this objective. The result reveals that there is long run cointegration among the variables in this study. The results demonstrate that positive (negative) shift in renewable energy development decrease (increase) CO(2) emissions while positive (negative) shocks in fossil fuel energy increase CO(2) emissions. Moreover, negative (positive) variation in COVID case leads to a decrease (increase) in CO(2) emissions. Moreover, an uni-directional causal impact was found to run from all the variables – renewable energy, fossil fuel, and COVID-19 case to CO(2) emissions. Finally, several policy recommendations are provided.