The impact of biofuel consumption on CO2 emissions: A panel data analysis for seven selected G20 countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 1498-1514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bingjie Xu ◽  
Ruoyu Zhong ◽  
Hui Qiao

Internationally, biofuel energy as a renewable energy source has been increasingly appreciated by various industries. The benefits of biofuel energy for environmental protection and global climate change cannot be denied. Hence, this paper examines the nexus among economic growth, biofuel consumption, urbanization rate, and CO2 emissions in seven selected Group of Twenty countries (G20) over 2001–2017. The results of fully modified ordinary least squares suggest that the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) exists between economic growth and CO2 emissions, and the impact of biofuel consumption and the urbanization rate on CO2 emissions is negative and positive, respectively. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nexus among economic growth, biofuel consumption, urbanization rate, and CO2 emissions. The significance of this paper is to add biofuel consumption as a new variable for a panel of seven selected Group of Twenty (G20) countries covering 2001–2017. In addition, this study put urbanization into the current environmental Kuznets curve model to validate that urbanization can increase CO2 emissions. Developing the biofuel industry can not only diminish fossil fuel energy consumption but also offer huge potential to reduce CO2 emissions.

Author(s):  
David I. Stern

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is a hypothesized relationship between environmental degradation and GDP per capita. In the early stages of economic growth, pollution emissions and other human impacts on the environment increase, but beyond some level of GDP per capita (which varies for different indicators), the trend reverses, so that at high income levels, economic growth leads to environmental improvement. This implies that environmental impacts or emissions per capita are an inverted U-shaped function of GDP per capita. The EKC has been the dominant approach among economists to modeling ambient pollution concentrations and aggregate emissions since Grossman and Krueger introduced it in 1991 and is even found in introductory economics textbooks. Despite this, the EKC was criticized almost from the start on statistical and policy grounds, and debate continues. While concentrations and also emissions of some local pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, have clearly declined in developed countries in recent decades, evidence for other pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, is much weaker. Initially, many understood the EKC to imply that environmental problems might be due to a lack of sufficient economic development, rather than the reverse, as was conventionally thought. This alarmed others because a simplistic policy prescription based on this idea, while perhaps addressing some issues like deforestation or local air pollution, could exacerbate environmental problems like climate change. Additionally, many of the econometric studies that supported the EKC were found to be statistically fragile. Some more recent research integrates the EKC with alternative approaches and finds that the relation between environmental impacts and development is subtler than the simple picture painted by the EKC. This research shows that usually, growth in the scale of the economy increases environmental impacts, all else held constant. However, the impact of growth might decline as countries get richer, and richer countries are likely to make more rapid progress in reducing environmental impacts. Finally, there is often convergence among countries, so that countries that have relatively high levels of impacts reduce them more quickly or increase them more slowly, all else held constant.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 1549-1568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia M. Ibrahiem ◽  
Shaimaa A. Hanafy

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the dynamic linkages amongst ecological footprints, fossil fuel consumption, real income, globalization and population in Egypt in the period from 1971 to 2014.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) methods to investigate the long run relationships amongst ecological footprints, economic growth, globalization, fossil fuel energy consumption and population. Moreover, the Toda–Yamamoto approach is conducted to examine the causal relationships between variables.FindingsEmpirical results of FMOLS and DOLS methods show that real income and fossil fuel consumption are responsible for deteriorating the environment, while globalization and population are found to mitigate it. As for Toda–Yamamoto–Granger causal relationship results, unidirectional causal relation from globalization, population and fossil fuel energy consumption to the ecological footprint exists. Moreover, bidirectional causal relation between real income on the one hand and globalization and the ecological footprint on the other hand is found.Originality/valueUsing carbon dioxide emissions has major weakness as carbon dioxide emissions are considered only part of the total environmental deterioration so this study is the first study for Egypt that uses the ecological footprint as an indicator for environmental quality and environmental pollution and links it with globalization, economic growth, population and fossil fuel energy consumption. Moreover, realizing the direction of causality between these variables might help policymakers in designing the policies to promote the shift towards clean energy sources, especially that achieving sustainable economic growth with more contribution to the global economy depending on diversification of energy sources without deteriorating the environment is considered one of the most important objectives of Egypt’s National Vision 2030.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Muhammad Fajri Setia Trianto ◽  
Evi Yulia Purwanti

The economy that continues to grow has the impact of environmental damage. This study aims to prove empirically the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis by analyzing the relationship of economic growth with environmental damage as measured by GDP per capita, and CO2 emissions. The data used are secondary data in the form of data on GDP per capita, CO2 emissions, population growth, inflation, and control of corruption in 10 countries in the ASEAN region in 2002-2016. Data analysis using the Fixed Effect model. The results show that there is a relationship between economic growth and environmental damage that forms an inverted U curve. Economic growth will initially have a positive effect on environmental damage so that at a point of economic growth negatively affects environmental damage. By adding control variables: population growth, inflation and corruption, inflation and corruption positively impact environmental damage, while population negatively affect environmental damage.


Author(s):  
Sakshi Gambhir

The relationship between economic growth and environmental quality has been much under dispute. According to the EKC (Environmental Kuznets Curve) hypothesis, environmental damage increases in the early stages of economic growth, but diminishes once nations reach higher levels of income. While the notion EKC is well established, there is controversy about its shape, incidence and determinants. In this paper, we model EKC with the variables of GDP and CO2 emissions (aggregate and per capita) using alternative model specifications to bridge the gap between conventional and modern EKC literature. We also place the theoretical construct of EKC into a policy-oriented framework by incorporating the impact of four global policy periods namely, liberalisation, globalisation, world recovery and global financial crisis. We substantiate a cubic form of EKC in the Indian context for the time period 1991 to 2014. With aggregate CO2 emissions as the dependent variable, the linear, quadratic and cubic terms are all significant with the expected signs, which confirm an N-shaped EKC for India. Even with per capita emissions as the dependent variable, existence of an N-shaped EKC is established. In this case however, evidence on the cubic term is rather weak which points towards the difference in socio-psychological factors that influence the revival of upturn in the case of India. The policy period analysis does not show any distinct results, which could be due to contradictory effects on different variables and volatility in these variables.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-75
Author(s):  
Achmad Rifa'i ◽  
Nurvita Retno Dewi

The environment is often regarded as affected by the economic activity. Many studies have attempted to prove the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) phenomenon, but few aimed to look beyond the impact of environmental quality and its contribution to the economic growth. This research aims to fill the gap of the literature. ASEAN is a region which is currently trying to maximize the potential of its natural resources to increase the economy of the region. With the abundance of existing natural resources, it is expected to make the region as a new economic source in the world. Panel data from 10 countries from 1994-2015 was employed to look at the environmental impacts of the ASEAN region on economic growth. Empirical results indicated that population, forest area, and CO2 emissions significantly affect economic growth. Nevertheless, it is suggested to be more prudent in using existing resources to maintain the stability of the economic growth without sacrificing the environment that has the very essential importance in the human life.


Author(s):  
Giedrė Lapinskienė ◽  
Manuela Tvaronavičienė ◽  
Pranas Vaitkus

Abstract The paper analyses a traditional Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) relationship between greenhouse gases (GHG) and gross domestic product (GDP), extending the research to include some additional factors, such as environmental tax, research and development expenditure, implicit tax rate on energy, primary production of coal and lignite, energy intensity of the economy taken from the Eurostat database. The EKC indicates that, at the early stages of economic growth, pollution increases with the growing use of resources, but when a certain level of income per capita is reached, the trend reverses so that, at a higher development stage, further economic growth leads to the improvement of the environment. In the first part of the research, the validity of the reduced EKC for the Baltic region for the period 1995-2008 is determined. In the second part, the impact of selected factors is statistically tested. In both cases, the standard cubic equation is used because it is believed that this model is the most accurate for the development stage of this region. The research results may be useful for climate change policy design.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Imran Khan ◽  
Muhammad Kamran Khan ◽  
Vishal Dagar ◽  
Bahareh Oryani ◽  
Syeda Saba Akbar ◽  
...  

This study intends to examine the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) in the United States of America (USA), considering the vital role of macroeconomic variables, such as economic growth, institutional quality, globalization, energy consumption, financial development, urbanization, and remittance from 1985 to 2020. The impact of positive/negative shock in a regressor on CO2 emissions keeps other regressors unchanged and has been investigated using the novel dynamic stimulated autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The empirical findings revealed the positive impact of economic growth and negative impact of the square economic growth on environmental degradation in the short- and long term. It indicates the validity of the EKC hypothesis in the case of the USA. Moreover, financial development, energy consumption, globalization, remittances inflow, and urbanization reduce the environmental quality. On the contrary, institutional quality improves the environmental quality by reducing CO2 emissions. The appropriate recommendations to design the inclusive economic-environment national energy policy were proposed.


Equilibrium ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-551
Author(s):  
Natalia Davidson ◽  
Oleg Mariev ◽  
Sophia Turkanova

Research background: Intensive economic growth in Russian regions during recent decades has been associated with numerous environmental issues, particularly increasing CO2 emissions, as well as income inequality. To achieve sustainable development, it is necessary to resolve these issues. Purpose of the article: To shed light on the impact of income inequality on CO2 emissions based on Russian regional data covering the years 2004?2018. Methods: Gini index and decile dispersion ratio are used to measure income inequality. To study the impact of income inequality on CO2 emissions in the Russian regions, we estimate econometric models with fixed and random effects and apply GMM method. We test the hypothesis of the environmental Kuznets curve to determine the impact of economic growth on CO2 emissions. Findings & value added: The results show that CO2 emissions increase in tandem with growth in income inequality between 10% of people with the lowest income and 10% of people with the highest income. Simultaneously, CO2 emissions decrease with growth of Gini coefficient. The hypothesis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve was confirmed based on GMM method. Our findings underscore that the activities of the extraction and manufacturing sectors, as well as energy consumption, increase CO2 emissions. The chief significance of this paper is the finding that large income gap between extremely rich and extremely poor population cohorts increases CO2 emissions. This implies that economic policy aimed at reducing income inequality in Russian regions will also reduce CO2 emissions, especially if accompanied by increased use of environmentally friendly technologies. From the international perspective, our research can be extended to study other countries and regions.


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