The impact of natural disaster on energy consumption: International evidence

This research shows that natural disasters may hurt energy consumption by using data on 123 countries over the period 1990-2015 and classifying them according to their economic development level and region based on World Development Indicators. We employ a two-step system-GMM method to examine the effect of natural di-sasters on energy consumption, presenting findings that support our hypotheses in the models and show a strong negative effect for low-income countries or those in the Africa region. After considering an alternative proxy for natural disaster, we implement quantile regression methods. Their results find that natural disasters exhibit a negative and significant impact on oil, renewable, and nuclear energy consumptions. The quantile regression models used in the robustness check present that the effects are stronger for low-level energy consumption economies. (c) 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automated summary

The research shows that natural disasters have a negative impact on energy consumption, especially for low-income countries or those in the Africa region. Quantile regression results indicate that natural disasters significantly affect oil, renewable, and nuclear energy consumption.