Assessing the effect of real estate market and renewable energy on environmental quality in Belgium

AbstractThe current research aims to study the influence of the real estate market and renewable energy on ecological quality in Belgium from 1990 to 2018. The recent study is quite different from the previous empirical literature on environmental quality; it introduces a new discourse on the determinant of environmental quality followed by Belgium's real estate market. This work employed a more robust and advanced econometric technique, that is, the ARDL bootstrap method, to estimate the relationship between the study variables. The empirical findings from the ARDL stimulation revealed that real estate negatively impacts environmental quality in Belgium in the short and long‐run periods. The policy implications emanating from the findings suggest that the real estate sector can significantly promote environmental quality by adopting and using renewable energy in construction, design, and buildings. Subsequently, this will reduce waste, energy and carbon emissions within the environment and prioritise using safer and sustainable green‐enabled material for real estate development. Again to ensure regulation in the real estate market so that tax revenue generated through real estate would be channelled towards building clean and smart cities, also, ecological and regulatory control should be enforced in the real estate market to foresee the possible reduction in environmental pollution through pollution, this measure will guarantee a green real estate investment that will lead to a sustained environment.