Nexus between energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission: evidence from 10 highest fossil fuel and 10 highest renewable energy-using economies

Abstract

The world, addressing to achieve rapid and drastic economic growth by relying on fossil fuel energy consumption, could increase already increasing level of carbon dioxide (CO₂). Therefore, there is a growing consensus that environmental sustainability by using renewable energy is the only option to avoid environmental calamity. Therefore, according to the authors' best knowledge, this is the first work to look into the short and long-run nexus between economic growth, trade openness, renewable and fossil fuel energy consumption, along with gross capital formation, population growth, and life expectancy as additional variables in top 10 highest renewable energy-using (TRU) economies and top 10 highest fossil fuel-using (TFU) economies from 1991 to 2020, by employing advanced panel data econometric approach. After demonstrating cross-sectional dependency in panel data, the Westerlund cointegration test verifies the long-term link between the variables. A cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) econometric technique is used to show short- and long-run coefficient values. CS-ARDL estimates confirm that the economic growth, fossil fuel energy, trade openness, and gross capital formation increase carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions levels in the short run for TRU and FEU economies, except for gross capital formation for FEU economies. However, economic growth adds to CO₂ emissions for only TRU economies, while fossil fuel energy consumption enhances CO₂ emissions for both groups of economies in the long run. On the contrary, renewable energy reduces CO₂ emissions in the short and long run, while human capital in only the short run. The inferences of this study present new intuitions and urge governments and policymakers to develop a reliable mechanism for investing capital to diversify the energy portfolio through the energy transition process to attain sustainable economic growth and promote awareness campaigns to draw the attention of human capital to environmentally friendly, clean, and green energy sources. Overall, the results recommended energy efficiency usage and ecological friendly innovative technologies to enhance and protect environmental quality.

Keywords: CS-ARDL; Carbon emission; Environment quality; Fossil fuel energy; Renewable energy consumption; Westerlund cointegration.