Room for improvement in low carbon economies of G7 and BRICS countries based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental Kuznets curves

Carbon emissions, which are nowadays targeted for significant reduction, cause global warming, with climate change producing a series of side effects including economic losses and ecological extinction. The data envelopment analysis approach has recently been employed for environmental estimations. The target of this study is to introduce a new data envelopment analysis method in order to provide environmental improvement suggestions. This study measures the room for improvements in low carbon economies of G7 group and BRICS group based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental Kuznets curves. The main findings are as follows: (i) the G7 group has greater room for improvement in its carbonization value than the BRICS group before 2005; however, the latter has greater room for improvement in carbonization value than the former after 2005; (ii) countries with the backfire effect of a high carbon economy include Germany, Italy, and South Africa; (iii) during the data period, three environmental Kuznets curves including energy intensity, emission intensity, and carbonization value - do not satisfy the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis that the curves are inverted U-shaped; on the contrary, the three environmental Kuznets curves in this study are U-shaped. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.