Impact of Clean Energy on CO 2 Emissions and Economic Growth within the Phases of Renewables Diffusion in Selected European Countries

Mariola Piłatowska and Andrzej Geise
Additional contact information
Mariola Piłatowska: Department of Econometrics and Statistics, Faculty of Economics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, 13A Gagarina Street, 87-100 Toruń, Poland
Andrzej Geise: Department of Econometrics and Statistics, Faculty of Economics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, 13A Gagarina Street, 87-100 Toruń, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-24

Abstract: This study explores the impact of clean energy and non-renewable energy consumption on CO 2 emissions and economic growth within two phases (formative and expansion) of renewable energy diffusion for three selected countries (France, Spain, and Sweden). The vector autoregression (VAR) model is estimated on the basis of annual data disaggregated into quarterly data. The Granger causality results reveal distinctive differences in the causality patterns across countries and two phases of renewables diffusion. Clean energy consumption contributes to a decline of emissions more clearly in the expansion phase in France and Spain. However, this effect seems to be counteracted by the increases in emissions due to economic growth and non-renewable energy consumption. Therefore, clean energy consumption has not yet led to a decoupling of economic growth from emissions in France and Spain; in contrast, the findings for Sweden evidence such a decoupling due to the neutrality between economic growth and emissions. Generally, the findings show that despite the enormous growth of renewables and active mitigation policies, CO 2 emissions have not substantially decreased in selected countries or globally. Focused and coordinated policy action, not only at the EU level but also globally, is urgently needed to overhaul existing fossil-fuel economies into low-carbon economies and ultimately meet the relevant climate targets.

Keywords: diffusion of renewable energy; decoupling; CO 2 emissions; economic growth; clean energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/4/812/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/4/812/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:4:p:812-:d:492917

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().