The effect of geopolitical risk on the clean energy metals' prices: the evidence of BRICS countries

This study examines the effect of geopolitical risk on clean energy metal prices for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) countries. Aluminum, cobalt, copper, nickel and zinc have been used as clean energy metals. The research period was determined as January 1990 to August 2021. Hatemi-J and Roca (2014) asymmetric causality test was used as the research method. According to the results, there is no causality between geopolitical risk of South Africa and cobalt prices for different cases. However, in general, there is causality between other clean energy metal prices and geopolitical risk in BRICS countries. Accordingly, the geopolitical risks of the BRICS countries both affect and are affected by these metal prices. This result suggests that changes in geopolitical risk of BRICS countries can provide useful information in explaining changes in clean energy metal prices. Likewise, changes in clean energy metal prices provide useful information in explaining the changes in geopolitical risk of BRICS countries. Therefore, policy makers need to develop new policies and strategies that can protect BRICS countries from clean energy metal price fluctuations in order to effectively use their renewable energy resources in their economic development. The relationship between geopolitical risk and clean energy metal prices is examined for BRICS countries.There is no relationship between South Africa geopolitical risk and cobalt prices.There is a one-way relationship between aluminum prices and South African geopolitical risk.South Africa geopolitical risk does not affect aluminum prices.Copper prices have an impact on Brazil geopolitical risk.There is a two-way relationship between the geopolitical risk of BRICS countries and Nickel-Zinc prices.