The dynamic linkage between renewable energy, tourism, CO2 emissions, economic growth, foreign direct investment, and trade.

Because of the lack of econometric studies in relevance to the link between tourism and renewable energy, the goal of this study is to remedy this lack and to explore the causal relationship between renewable energy consumption, the number of tourist arrivals, the trade openness ratio, economic growth, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for a panel of 22 Central and South American countries, spanning the period 1995-2010. The empirical findings document that the variables under investigation are cointegrated, while short-run Granger causality tests illustrate unidirectional causalities running from: i) renewable energy to CO2 emissions and trade; ii) tourism to trade; and iii) economic growth to trade and tourism. In the long-run, there is evidence of bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption, tourism, trade openness and emissions. Thus, renewable energy and tourism are in a strong long-run causal relationship. Moreover, long-run fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) estimates highlight that tourism and renewable energy contribute to the reduction of emissions, while trade and economic growth lead to higher carbon emissions. Therefore, encouraging the use of renewable energy and tourism developments, particularly green tourism, are good policies for this region to combat climate change.N/

Economic growth and combustible renewables and waste consumption nexus in MENA countries

This paper is an attempt to investigate the causal relationship between economic growth and combustible renewables and waste consumption for 12 countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region during the period of 1975-2008 using panel cointegration techniques and panel causality tests. Granger causality test shows that there is evidence of no causality among variables in the short-run, while in the long-run the panel error correction model results reveal bidirectional causality between combustible renewables and waste consumption and economic growth. The results from OLS, FMOLS and DOLS panel estimates suggest that: i) The coefficient of combustible renewables and waste is positive and statistically significant. ii) The impact of economic growth on combustible renewables and waste is positive and statistically significant. In the long-run, a 1% increase in combustible renewables and waste increases real GDP in MENA countries by approximately 0.08%, and a 1% increase in economic growth increase combustible renewables and waste by approximately 0.43%. These results reveal that there is no strong relationship between variables given that the impact of each one on the other is quite small

The Impact of Combustible Renewables and Waste Consumption and Transport on the Environmental Degradation: The Case of Tunisia

This study investigates the dynamic causal links between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), combustible renewables and waste consumption, and maritime and rail transport in Tunisia spanning the period 1980-2011. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and Granger causality tests are employed to examine the short- and long-run relationships between variables. The empirical results suggest a bidirectional short-run causality between CO2 emissions and maritime transport, and a unidirectional causality running from real GDP, combustible renewables and waste consumption, rail transport to CO2 emissions. The long-run estimates reveal that real GDP contributes to the decrease of CO2 emissions, while combustible renewables and waste consumption and maritime and rail transport have a positive impact on emissions. Our policy recommendation is that Tunisia should use more combustible renewables and waste energy and increase the number of passenger’s rail and maritime transport in order to motivate economic activities. However, the level of renewable energy required to reduce emissions caused by transport sector still very weak

The Impact of Combustible Renewables and Waste Consumption and Transport on the Environmental Degradation: The Case of Tunisia

This study investigates the dynamic causal links between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), combustible renewables and waste consumption, and maritime and rail transport in Tunisia spanning the period 1980-2011. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and Granger causality tests are employed to examine the short- and long-run relationships between variables. The empirical results suggest a bidirectional short-run causality between CO2 emissions and maritime transport, and a unidirectional causality running from real GDP, combustible renewables and waste consumption, rail transport to CO2 emissions. The long-run estimates reveal that real GDP contributes to the decrease of CO2 emissions, while combustible renewables and waste consumption and maritime and rail transport have a positive impact on emissions. Our policy recommendation is that Tunisia should use more combustible renewables and waste energy and increase the number of passenger’s rail and maritime transport in order to motivate economic activities. However, the level of renewable energy required to reduce emissions caused by transport sector still very weak

Output, renewable energy consumption and trade in Africa

We use panel cointegration techniques to examine the relationship between renewable energy consumption, trade and output in a sample of 11 African countries covering the period 1980-2008. The results from panel error correction model reveal that there is evidence of bidirectional causality between output and exports and between output and imports in both the short-run and the long-run. However, in the short-run, there is no evidence of causality between output and renewable energy consumption and between trade (exports or imports) and renewable energy consumption. In the long-run, the FMOLS panel approach estimation shows that renewable energy consumption and trade (exports or imports) have a statistically significant and positive impact on output. Policies recommendations are that, in the long-run, international trade enables African countries to benefit from technology transfer and to build the human and physical capacities needed to produce more renewable energies, which in turn increases their output

The role of renewable energy and agriculture in reducing CO2 emissions: evidence for North Africa countries

This paper uses panel cointegration techniques and Granger causality tests to investigate the dynamic causal links between per capita renewable energy consumption, agricultural value added (AVA), carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and real gross domestic product (GDP) for a panel of five North Africa countries spanning the period 1980-2011. In the short-run, the Granger causality tests show the existence of a bidirectional causality between CO2 emissions and agriculture, a unidirectional causality running from agriculture to GDP, a unidirectional causality running from GDP to renewable energy consumption, and a unidirectional causality running from renewable energy consumption to agriculture. In the long-run, there is bidirectional causality between agriculture and CO2 emissions, a unidirectional causality running from renewable energy to both agriculture and emissions, and a unidirectional causality running from output to both agriculture and emissions. Long-run parameter estimates show that an increase in GDP and in renewable energy consumption increase CO2 emissions, whereas an increase in agricultural value added reduces CO2 emissions. As policy recommendation, North African authorities should encourage renewable energy consumption, and especially clean renewable energy such as solar or wind, as this improves agricultural production and help to combat global warming

The environmental Kuznets curve, economic growth, renewable and non-renewable energy, and trade in Tunisia

We use the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds approach to cointegration in order to investigate the short and long-run relationship between per capita CO2 emission, GDP, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and trade openness for Tunisia during the period 1980-2009. The Fisher-statistic for cointegration is established when CO2 emission is defined as a dependent variable. The stability of coefficients in the long and short-run is examined. Short-run Granger causality suggests that there is a one way causality relationship from economic growth and trade openness (exports and imports) to emissions, whereas there is no causality running from renewable and non-renewable energy consumption to emissions. The results from the long-run relationship suggest that non-renewable energy consumption contributes positively in explaining CO2 emission (for both models), whereas renewable energy affects CO2 emission negatively (for the model with exports). The contribution of trade openness is positive and statistically significant in the long-run. The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) that assumes an inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita CO2 emissions and output is not supported in the long-run. This means that Tunisia has not yet reached the required level of per capita GDP to get an inverted U-shaped EKC

Timing of adoption of clean technologies, transboundary pollution and international trade

We consider a symmetric model composed of two countries and a firm in each country. Firms produce the same good by means of a polluting technology that uses fossil energy. However, these firms can adopt a clean technology that uses a renewable energy and that has a lower unit cost. Surprisingly, opening markets to international competition increases the per-unit emission-tax and decreases the per-unit production subsidy. Interestingly, the socially-optimal adoption date under a common market better internalizes transboundary pollution than that under autarky, and than the optimal adoption date of regulated firms. However, the optimal adoption date of non-regulated firms completely don't internalize transboundary pollution. In autarky (resp. a common market), regulated firms adopt earlier (resp. later) than what is socially-optimal, whereas non-regulated firms adopt later than the socially-optimal adoption date and than the optimal adoption date of regulated firms. Therefore, in autarky (resp. a common market) regulators can induce firms to adopt at the socially-optimal adoption date by giving them postpone ( resp. speed up) adoption subsidies. Opening markets to international trade, speeds up the socially-optimal adoption date and delays optimal adoption dates of regulated and non-regulated firms

Renewable Energy Consumption and Agriculture: Evidence for Cointegration and Granger causality for Tunisian Economy

This paper uses the vector error correction model (VECM) and Granger causality tests to investigate short and long-run relationships between per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, real gross domestic product (GDP), renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, trade openness ratio and agricultural value added (AVA) in Tunisia spanning the period 1980-2011. The Johansen-Juselius test shows that all our considered variables are cointegrated. Short-run Granger causality tests reveal the existence of bidirectional causalities between AVA and CO2 emissions, and between AVA and trade; unidirectional causalities running from non-renewable energy and output to AVA and to renewable energy, and from CO2 emissions to renewable energy. Interestingly, there are long-run bidirectional causalities between all considered variables. Our long-run parameters estimates show that non-renewable energy, trade and AVA increase CO2 emissions, whereas renewable energy reduces CO2 emissions. In addition, the inverted U-shaped environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis is not supported. Our policy recommendations are to increase international economic exchanges because this gives new opportunities to the agricultural sector to develop and to benefit from renewable energy technology transfer. Subsidizing renewable energy use in the agricultural sector enables it to become more competitive on the international markets while polluting less and contributing to combat global warming

Output, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and international trade: Evidence from a panel of 69 countries

This paper uses panel cointegration techniques to examine the causal relationship between output, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, and international trade for a sample of 69 countries during the period 1980-2007. In the short-run, Granger causality tests show that there is a bidirectional causality between output and trade (exports or imports), a bidirectional causality between non-renewable energy and trade, and a one way causality running from renewable energy to trade. In the long-run, a bidirectional causality between renewable energy and imports and a unidirectional causality running from renewable energy to exports, are noticed. Our long-run OLS, FMOLS and DOLS estimates suggest that renewable, non-renewable energy consumption and trade have a positive impact on economic growth. Our energy policy recommendations are the following: i) any non-renewable energy policy should take into account the importance of international trade, ii) more renewable energy use should be encouraged by national and international competent authorities in order to increase international economic exchanges and promote economic growth without harming the environment, and iii) increasing imports, particularly by developing countries, is a good vehicle for renewable energy technology transfer and contributes to increase renewable energy consumption in the long-run, thus contributing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions