R&D expenditure and energy consumption in OECD nations

Sefa Awaworyi Churchill, John Inekwe and Kris Ivanovski

Energy Economics, 2021, vol. 100, issue C

Abstract: We examine the time-varying effect of energy technology R&D spending (R&D) on energy consumption per capita. In doing so, we utilise a data-driven local linear dummy variable estimation (LLDVE) method, which we apply to a panel of OECD nations for the period 1980 to 2014. Our LLDVE estimates point to a time-varying and positive effect of R&D on total energy consumption. We disaggregate energy consumption into non-renewable and renewable energy consumption to determine the heterogenous effects of innovation. On the non-renewable side, R&D shows a positive impact on non-renewable energy consumption, although this is observed since 1998. On the renewable side, the uptake of R&D is associated with positive and significant effects until 1996 where the effect reverts to negative. Our findings suggest that while global energy transformation to renewables has been on the rise, continual technological breakthroughs may promote higher levels of sustainable energy and, thus, help achieve the desired global temperature.

Keywords: R&D spending; Renewable energy; Fossil fuel energy; Energy consumption; OECD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988321002796
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:100:y:2021:i:c:s0140988321002796

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105376

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().