Taxes, renewables and ecological footprint in Ghana, and Nigeria, and South Africa

Environmental taxes push countries away from carbon-intensive energy, while renewable energy pulls them closer to green energy options. This synergy can be important for environmental quality but little is known about their joint impact on ecological footprint. This study explored moderation and mediation effects in analysing the joint impact of environmental taxes and renewable energy consumption on ecological footprint in Africa, focusing on Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa from 2017 to 2024. It also examined how renewable energy consumption responds to environmental taxes. The Driscoll and Kraay with Fixed Effects and the Panel-Corrected Standard Error estimators were employed for the analyses. While environmental taxes were found to directly reduce renewable energy consumption, environmental taxes and renewable energy consumption worked together to enhance environmental quality by lowering the ecological footprint based on the moderation and mediation analyses. This suggests a complementary role rather than purely stimulative role of taxation in environmental protection policy and demands a coordinated policy design where environmental tax revenue is invested to promote renewable energy consumption and environmental quality.