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Abstract This paper investigates the relationship among carbon dioxide emissions, economic growth and electricity consumption in the presence of two other variables which are trade openness and annual average temperature. The study uses data of four selected North- African countries over the period 1971–2014. We use the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Cointegration approach (ARDL) known as the Bounds approach. The obtained results confirm the existence of long run equilibrium among the studied variables. The long run analysis reveals that economic growth and electricity consumption are the main cause of environment degradation, while the increased temperature over the year leads to increase electricity consumption in Egypt and Morocco. On the other hand, the analysis of short run causalities confirms the growth hypothesis in these two countries. Furthermore, the feedback relationship between economic growth and electricity consumption has been confirmed in Tunisia. These findings imply that environmental and economic corrective measures have to be adopted to achieve green growth and sustainable development. Highlights • The economic growth in North-Africa region is accompanied by an increased electricity use. • Energy consumption and economic growth are the main sources of CO2 emissions. • Climate change appears to be a significant factor that determines electricity consumption in the region. • North- African countries should investing in renewable energy field to achieve sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Climate change is of great concern for society today. Manufacturing industries and construction account for approximately 20% of global CO2 emissions and, consequently, it is important that this sector investigate options to reduce its CO2 emissions. One option could be to substitute fossil fuels with renewable alternatives. This paper describes a case study in which four future energy market scenarios predicting 2030 were used to analyse whether it would be profitable for a steel plant to produce bio-SNG (bio-synthetic natural gas) in a biomass gasifier and to substitute LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) with bio-SNG as fuel in reheating furnaces. The effects on global CO2 emissions were analysed from a perspective in which biomass is considered a limited resource. The results from the analysis show that investment in a biomass gasifier and fuel conversion would not be profitable in any of the scenarios. Depending on the scenario, the production cost for bio-SNG ranged between 22 and 36 EUR/GJ. Fuel substitution would reduce global CO2 emission if the marginal biomass user is a producer of transportation fuel. However, if the marginal user of biomass is a coal power plant with wood co-firing, the result would be increased global CO2 emissions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]