Determinants of renewable energy consumption in agrarian Sub-Sahara African economies

The effect of ecological distortions and climate change issues have been at the forefront of the minds of policymakers and energy practitioners in recent decades. This concern is associated with the vision of the seventh and thirteenth Sustainable Development Goals that are centered on access to clean energy sources and mitigating climate change issues, as detailed in Vision 2030. To this end, the present study uses Pesaran’s Pooled Mean Group Auto Regressive Distributed Lag model to investigate the determinants of clean/non-conventional energy in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa. The empirical results show that a 1% increase in economic activity increases the level of renewable energy consumption by 0.128% in the short run. In the long-run, economic growth dampens the consumption of renewable energy by 0.402% over the investigated period. The reason for this peculiar result for the Sub-Saharan African economies could be attributed to the prevalent demand for conventional energy sources and the cost-related factor associated with clean energy technologies even when the economy (herein measured by Gross Domestic Product) is improving. Furthermore, the effect of energy (electricity from fossil fuel) also shows a statistically significant impact when trying to reduce the clean energy consumption. This arises from an expected trade-off effect. Regarding the causality analysis using the heterogeneous panel, the causality results present a one-way causality running from economic growth to renewable energy consumption. We also found there to be a feedback causality relationship between urbanization and renewable energy as well as agricultural value added and economic growth. Based on these findings, several policy decisions were prescribed for Sub-Saharan African economies such as the diversification of Sub-Saharan African economies energy to more renewable energy sources and the adoption of clean energy technologies that are reputed to be cleaner and environmentally friendly.© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

New insight into the causal linkage between economic expansion, FDI, coal consumption, pollutant emissions and urbanization in South Africa

Author's accepted version (postprint).This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Springer in Environmental Science and Pollution Research on 13 March 2020.Available online: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11356-020-08145-0acceptedVersio

Examining the tourism-led growth hypothesis, agricultural-led growth hypothesis and economic growth in top agricultural producing economies

Most nations are striving to achieve sustainable economic growth. Among the diverse routes explored are tourism and agriculture. This study examines tourism-led growth hypothesis and agriculture-induced growth hypothesis in the context of the world top four agricultural producing economies in a multivariate balanced panel framework between 1995 and 2015. The findings from the bootstrap panel co-integration tests do not support a long-run relationship among the variables. Subsequently, causality test reveals a feedback relationship between international tourism receipt and economic growth. Thus, the tourism-led growth hypothesis is affirmed, while a uni-directional causality runs from agriculture to economic growth. Our findings affirm both the tourism-led and agriculture-led growth hypotheses. Hence, tourism and agriculture sectors are twin growth catalysts in the selected states, that is, both tourism and agriculture sectors have complementary effect on economic growth in the bloc investigated.No sponso

Dynamic impact of trade policy, economic growth, fertility rate, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption on ecological footprint in Europe

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An Investigation into the Role of Tourism Growth, Conventional Energy Consumption and Real Income on Ecological Footprint Nexus in France

Previously documented studies in the literature on how tourism leads to economic growth in the form of tourism-led growth hypotheses (TLGH) has been investigated. This study presents a new perspective on the growth of tourism by considering its impact on conventional energy consumption, real income level, and emission via the channel of globalization. Sequences of econometric tests were conducted to validate the hypothesized claims between tourism development and growth impact on conventional energy consumption and pollution proxy by ecological footprints, globalization GDP per capita, biocapacity, and tourists for the case of France. Empirical evidence from the Granger causality test presents a uni-directionalcausality from ecological footprints to GDP per capita and from biocapacity to ecological footprints. The correlation matrix shows interrelation amongst series with biocapacity significantly correlating with ecological footprints with tourist’s arrival having a positive correlation with ecological footprints and a negative one with biocapacity. GPD per capita was found to positively affect the ecological footprints and have a negative correlation with biocapacity and a significant relationship with tourists' arrivals. Additionally, globalization exerts a positive impact on ecological footprints, and its effect on biocapacity was found to be negative although globalization's effect on tourists’ arrivals and per capita GDP is significant. The ARDL estimation indicated biocapacity as a neutral agent for ecological footprints, tourist arrivals having a negative impact on ecological footprints, and globalization significantly affecting ecological footprints. From these findings, it is evident that tourism growth has a significant impact on energy consumption and pollution. Policy recommendations were also provided in this study accordingl

The Contribution of Agricultural Sector on Economic Growth of Nigeria

Agriculture is a panacea for economic growth (Gunner Myrdal, 1984). The battle for long-run economic growth is either won or lost in the agricultural sector. However, how this path births economic prosperity has been the subject of debates among economist and development scholars. This study empirically examines the impact of agricultural sector on the economic growth of Nigeria, using time series data from 1981 to 2013. Findings revealed that Real Gross Domestic Product (RGDP), agricultural output and oil rents have a long-run equilibrium relationship. Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) result shows that, the speed of adjustment of the variables towards their long run equilibrium path was low, though agricultural output had a positive impact on economic growth. It was recommended that, the government and policy makers should embark on diversification and enhance more allocation in terms of budgeting to the agricultural sector. Keywords: Agriculture, economic growth, time series, cointegration and vector error correction model (VECM). JEL Classifications: O13, Q32, Q3

Analysis and Synthesis of Alternative Solutions to Environmental Problems Associated with Large-scale Projects

In this study the environmental problems in the large-scale project called "Ecology of the Angaro-Yenisei region" are addressed. A description of various approaches to assess the program of conservation and restoration of the Yenisei as the basis of the ecological potential of the Angaro-Yenisei region is presented. A justification is given for taking into account the uncertainty in such an assessment. The present study suggests three stages of assessment for different levels, macro-, meso- and microlevel. The estimates of the previous assessment level are the initial information for the lower level, which allows a gradually reduction of the degree of uncertainty. At the first stage, the goals of the program were developed and ranked by expert assessment methods. The second stage consisted in analyzing the National Project called "Ecology of Russia," composed of 11 interconnected federal projects. A mathematical model of the problem of optimal project management in conditions of uncertainty is presented. At the third stage, a hybrid model of assessing a large ecological project from the logical-descriptive model created at the first stage and the mathematical model of stage 2 is considered. Similar models, in the creation of which the authors took part, were used in the assessment of large-scale railway projects. More specifically, with the help of one of them, an analysis of the development of the Asian part of the Russian Federation was carried out by the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In conclusion, the need of the use of mathematical methods at various stages of assessing large-scale environmental projects from their initiation to implementation is justifie

Trivariate modelling of the nexus between electricity consumption, urbanization and economic growth in Nigeria : fresh insights from Maki Cointegration and causality tests

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Modeling natural gas consumption, capital formation, globalization, CO2 emissions and economic growth nexus in Malaysia : Fresh evidence from combined cointegration and causality analysis

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Does Labor Market Hysteresis Hold in Low Income Countries?

This study tests for labor market hysteresis in low income countries while accounting for structural break in the unemployment rates. This is to verify if unemployment in low income countries will return back to natural rate of unemployment in the long run using data from Nigeria and South Africa.  It follows the procedure for single structural break unit root test by Zivot and Andrews (1992). The empirical result indicates that accounting for structural break makes the unemployment rate series stationary for Nigeria; hence, shocks to the unemployment rates will have temporary effects. Contrarily, evidence of hysteresis was found in South Africa's unemployment rates series because it was not stationary. Nigeria's macroeconomic policy can aim at lowering inflation through a contractionary policy, it will temporarily increase unemployment but it will return back to its natural state, but structural reforms that will prompt shock on South African unemployment will increase the persistence of hysteresis. Keywords: Unemployment, Hysteresis, Unit root, Stationarity. EL Classifications: C22; E24; J16; J2