Role of the renewable energy sources (RES) in achieving to sustainable development (SD)

Historically, economic development has been strongly correlated with increasing energy use and growth of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Renewable energy sources (RES) can help decouple that correlation, contributing to sustainable development (SD). In addition, RES offers the opportunity to improve access to modern energy services for the poorest members of society, which is crucial for the achievement of any single of the eight Millennium Development Goals. Theoretical concepts of SD can provide useful frameworks to assess the interactions between SD and RES. Traditionally, SD has been framed in the three-pillar model—Economy, Ecology, and Society— allowing a schematic categorization of development goals, with the three pillars being interdependent and mutually reinforcing. Within another conceptual framework, SD can be oriented along a continuum between the two paradigms of weak sustainability and strong sustainability. The two paradigms differ in assumptions about the substitutability of natural and human-made capital. RES can contribute to the development goals of the three-pillar model and can be assessed in terms of both weak and strong SD, since RES utilization is defined as sustaining natural capital as long as its resource use does not reduce the potential for future harvest. The paper seeks to answer the question that how are renewable energy sources contributing to sustainable development The main hypothesis is that RES offers the opportunity to contribute to a number of important SD goals: (1) social and economic development; (2) energy access; (3) energy security; (4) climate change mitigation and the reduction of environmental and health impacts. The article seeks to investigate the relationship between these four SD goals and RES and, at times, fossil and nuclear energy technologies. The assessments are based on different methodological tools, including bottom-up indicators derived from attributional lifecycle assessments (LCA) or energy statistics, dynamic integrated modelling approaches, and qualitative analyses.

Keywords:

Sustainable development , Renewable energy , Greenhouse gases , Sustainable development indicators