A decoupling process of Pakistan?s agriculture sector: Insights from energy and economic perspectives

As the energy-intensive and productive sector, agriculture enriched social prosperity, fed people, and enriched huge poverty worldwide. Development mechanisms, energy consumption and energy efficiency in the agricul-ture sector have become equally necessary in the services and industrial sectors. The study's main objective is to analyze the agricultural energy decomposition and its decoupling with the economic output in Pakistan from 1981 to 2020. For this, the study employed the logarithmic mean Divisia index method to give proof of the effect of four major driving factors, including agriculture energy intensity (AEI), agriculture economic output (AEO), agriculture labor intensity (ALI), and total agriculture land (TAL). The study gives a significant relationship between energy consumption and economic growth based on identified decoupling states. The outcomes show that AEO is the major factor in raising energy consumption. AEI and TAL show an increasing return to scale, while ALI shows mixed effects over the intervals. Only strong and expansive negative decoupling is maximally given in the analysis, while the other five decouplings show little impact. Thus, based on further policies, the strong negative decoupling state could be further substituted with strong decoupling using energy technologies. It suggests that the agriculture sector can attain mixed energy, energy management, enhance capital investment, and skilled labor because the speed of energy use is increasing. To check the provincial measures, costing, energy share, and carbon emission information can be further estimated.

Automated summary

This study analyzes the decomposition of agricultural energy and its decoupling with economic output in Pakistan from 1981 to 2020. The results show that agricultural economic output is the major factor influencing energy consumption. Agricultural energy intensity and total agricultural land exhibit increasing returns to scale, while agricultural labor intensity has mixed effects. Strong and expansive negative decoupling is observed, suggesting the potential for further achieving strong decoupling through the use of energy technologies. The findings highlight the importance of adopting diverse energy sources, energy management, increased capital investment, and skilled labor to cope with the increasing energy consumption in the agriculture sector.