Renewable energy deployment in the MENA region: Does innovation matter?

•Innovation performance improves governance quality of energy transition.•Renewable energy consumption increases when ICTs adoption increase.•We call for the encouragement of R&D programs that enhance renewable energy. This paper contributes to the renewable energy literature from two perspectives. First, we investigate the factors driving renewable energy deployment in the MENA countries using economic, financial, and political variables including financial development, government effectiveness and political stability. This investigation is empirically carried out by the Panel Smooth Transition Model (PSTR) (Gonzales et al., 2017) that explicitly explores the threshold effect within the determinants of renewable energy production. Second, we introduce innovation as a new determinant of renewable energy deployment to account for the mediating role of technological innovation in the achievement of SDGs and especially the SDG7. Using two proxies of innovation (i.e. ICT and percentage of internet users), we show that higher innovation performance is likely to increase the impact of governance quality on renewable energy deployment. Therefore, governance quality, innovation, political stability, and financial development are the main drivers of renewable energy deployment. The paper calls for sustainable policy options that increase innovation performance and governance quality to increase the production of renewable energy.