Various Trends on the National Development of Renewable Energy Source Affecting the Natural Resource Depletion

Abstract

Renewable energy sources are foreseen to rise as they become scarce and expensive fossil fuels. Considering this thought, each country implements different strategies and national policies to support the development of renewable sources. However, these emerging developments may contribute to its depletion of natural sources. In this paper, an exploratory pattern analysis was used on 125 selected countries to determine the underlying trends on the effect of the development of renewable energy (RE) sources while utilizing the countries’ natural resources. Due to different status of each country, the trends were grouped in similar associations such as negative, positive and bell-like relationships. Developed countries showed a negative relationship where the natural resources are heavily utilized in the early stages but rapidly decreased as the RE progresses. This reflects the capability of these countries with high to very-high human development index (HDI) to invest more on advanced technologies which utilize fewer natural resources. On the other hand, the underdeveloped countries with low to moderate HDI behave in a positive relationship showing their heavily dependence on its natural resources as RE progresses. Moreover, a group of developing countries between developed and underdeveloped categories and without direct relationship to HDI showed a transition between positive to negative transition as the RE progresses.

These findings support the international policymakers, developers and investors on RE market justifications and entrustments, and fair RE policies such as the integration of Carbon Footprint Policy.