Increasing Access to Clean Fuels and Clean Technologies: A Club Convergence Approach

Resumen

In this paper we test for convergence in access to clean energy and clean technology among nations in order to study the economic determinants of access to clean energy and clean technologies. This is important because without access to clean fuels, no global development strategy can be environmentally sustainable. After obtaining an estimated convergence rate under a conditional β" role="presentation" style="position: relative;">??ß ß -convergence model, we use a more sophisticated club convergence econometric framework and ultimately reject the hypothesis of β" role="presentation" style="position: relative;">??ß ß -convergence in favor of subgroups exhibiting intra-group convergence tendencies that are distinct from the other groups. We then employ a club convergence algorithm which groups the 93 nations studied into 8 convergence clubs based on characteristics including the percentage of the population with access to clean energy in the household and the growth rate of this percentage. Evidence that household access to clean energy and clean technology is tied to economic development and institutional quality is provided by showing that the convergence clubs not only reflect distinct strata in access to clean energy but are also strongly tied to important indicators of institutional quality.