Impact of non-renewable and renewable energy consumption on economic growth: evidence from income and regional groups of countries

The motivation behind this study is to investigate the impact of non-renewable and renewable energy consumption on economic growth for a panel of 99 world countries with energy inclusive production function and then finding the empirical evidences for income and regional classification of world economies. To accomplish this purpose, the study has employed panel estimation techniques of dynamic and fully modified ordinary least square and fixed effects model after confirming Hausman test over the period of 1995-2017. For overall sample, the impact of non-renewable and renewable energy consumption on economic growth is found to be significantly positive while this relationship of energy-growth varies at income and regional classification. To incorporate the omitted variable biasness, capital and labor were included in the model. Thus, it is evident from the results that in the presence of non-renewable and renewable energy consumption, capital and labor have significant positive impact on economic growth. It is concluded that although energy consumption has a vital importance in boosting growth and development of the economies but heavily focusing on non-renewable energy cause environmental problems therefore, it is suggested to promote renewable energy sector for efficient and environment friendly use of energy.

Automated summary

The study reveals that both non-renewable and renewable energy consumption have a significantly positive impact on economic growth, but this relationship varies across different income and regional classifications. Furthermore, capital and labor also play a significant role in driving economic growth. Therefore, promoting the renewable energy sector for efficient and environmentally friendly energy use is crucial.