A Note on Growth, Energy Intensity and the Energy Mix: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

Antonia Díaz, Gustavo Marrero, Luis Puch and Jesús Rodríguez-López ()

No 18.08, Working Papers from Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper explores how changes in energy intensity and the switch to renewables can boost economic growth. In doing so, we implement a dynamic panel data approach on a sample of 134 countries over the period 1960 to 2010. We incorporate a set of control variables, related to human and physical capital, socio-economic conditions, and policies which are widely used in the associated literature. According to our results, and given the current state of technology, improving energy intensity is an approach that could reconcile growth and the environment at the worldwide level. Moving to conventional renewables (biomass and hydro) may reduce CO2 emissions, consistent with the related literature, although we do not find evidence that supports a growth enhancing effect. However, moving to frontier renewables (wind, solar, wave or geothermic) does reconcile the reduction of CO2 emissions with economic growth. Our results are robust to the specification of the dynamic panel with respect to three alternative methods, namely, the pooled OLS regression, the regression under fixed effects, and the GMM estimation.

Keywords: Economic growth; energy intensity; renewable energy; dynamic panel data models. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C33 O5 Q2 Q3 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-gro, nep-reg and nep-res
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pab:wpaper:18.08

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