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We investigated the asymmetric effects of energy consumption, car ownership and tourism activities on CO2 emissions in the UK. Empirical results from the Non-Linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model reveal that in the UK, only car ownership has asymmetric effects on emissions with a magnitude of −1.428% (positive) and 10.108% (negative) shocks that highlight the impact of car ownership on emission level in UK while rising energy consumption and GDP have symmetric positive impacts on emissions, and tourism has a negative impact on emissions. Furthermore, on causality analysis, we found a unidirectional causality runs from GDP per capita to car ownership, and that car ownership and tourism both causes energy consumption in a one-way relationship. Apart from encouraging environmentally friendly energy sources to reduce carbon emission in the UK, the short and long-run analyses disclose that economic expansion and energy consumption increase carbon emission. Empirical results also offer a new perspective on the ascending relevance of electric cars in UK. Hence, only policies that discourage the use of carbon emission inputs in the process of production should be encouraged. Electric vehicles seem to be more efficient when compared to combustion engines because most energy put in the battery is used to drive the cars and wastes less energy when they are driven in cities. This can be achieved by increasing tariffs and decreasing quotas on internal combustion-powered cars. Subsequently, promote and increase usage of electric vehicles that reduce greenhouses [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of increased renewable energy consumption has been widely debated, and this has become a central energy policy concern for developing and developed countries. The existing literature provides evidence that there is a positive relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in developed economies. However, findings in respect of developing/emerging economies remain inconclusive. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the impact on renewable energy consumption on economic growth by controlling other macroeconomic variables for regions of Sub-Saharan Africa (East, Central and West) covering the 1990–2018 sample period. For this purpose, common correlated effects mean group estimator (CCEMG) and Dumitrescu-Hurlin Granger causality test approach are used to consider both cross-sectional dependency and cross-country heterogeneity across countries. The CCEMG result indicates that an increase in renewable energy consumption led to reduction in economic growth even when the sample is analyzed based on geographical locations as East, West, and Central Africa. Granger causality results validate the feedback hypothesis for only Central Africa; the growth hypothesis is supported for East and West Africa. The empirical results suggest that energy planners, governments, and policy makers must act together to increase the renewable energy consumption share in her energy mix to promote economic growth for regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity remains the most important form of end-use energy consumption and an important factor for economic growth and development. However, electricity generation also constitutes a great source of concern for global warming and climate change with threats to sustainable development as fossil fuels dominate electricity generation fuel mix for most economies of the world. This is exactly the case for Italy with fossil fuels dominating electricity generation fuel mix over the last couple of decades. Thus, there is a need to reverse this trend by increasing the shares of renewable energy sources in the fuel mix. This study, therefore, investigates the potentials for renewable energy sources of hydropower and solar energy to substitute the fossil fuels of coal and natural gas in electricity generation for Italy. Adopting the ridge regression procedure to obtain the parameter estimates, the results provide evidence that substitution is possible among all fuels. While both hydropower and solar energy are found to be substitutable for the fossil fuels, solar energy is found to provide more substitutability than hydropower. This implies that Italy has the potential to gradually move away from the carbon-intensive fossil fuels of coal and gas to more environmental-friendly solar energy and hydropower in the process of generating electricity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tourism sector has emerged as an essential driver for economic growth strategies during the last decades. An asymmetric long-run effect of air transport on economic growth is validated assuming a process of social globalization in Spain between 1970 and 2015. To achieve the study's objective, the recent asymmetric autoregressive distributed lag methodology framework advanced by Shin, Yu, and Greenwood-Nimmo (2014) is applied. For determining the causality direction, this methodology is applied in conjunction with the non-parametric causality test proposed by Diks and Panchenko (2006). The current study also accounts for the effects of renewable energy use and urbanization process over economic growth. Empirical results showed that air transport, urbanization process and social globalization exert positive and significant implications over economic growth, while renewable energy use reduces economic growth, as consequence of an energy mix sustained by fossil sources. Based on these outcomes several policy recommendations were offered in the concluding section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]