Use renewables to be cleaner: Meta-analysis of the renewable energy consumption-economic growth nexus

The renewable energy consumption-economic growth nexus is a growing area of research over the last few years, emanating to mixed results. The aim of the current study is to quantitatively synthesise the empirical literature on the subject using the meta-analysis approach. In particular, a meta-multinomial regression is employed to investigate the sources of variation in the direction of causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth. This causal relationship takes the form of four hypotheses, namely the feedback, conservation, growth and neutrality hypotheses. To the best of author's knowledge, this study constitutes the first meta-analysis undertaken on the renewable energy consumption-economic growth nexus. The empirical results reveal that the variation in the supported hypotheses is due to a number of characteristics including model specification, data characteristics, estimation techniques (cointegration methods and causality tests), and development level of the country on which a study was conducted. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.