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Although renewable energy has been emphasized to mitigate carbon emissions, energy policies may require rearrangement. This paper aims to suggest the possibility of needs in energy policy rearrangement by revealing if the mitigation impact of the renewable energy supply has been diminished with a case study on Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Adopting the idea of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, the study investigates the nonlinear relationship between the renewable energy supply and carbon emissions. We collected the longest panel data possible for 34 OECD countries from 1971 to 2019. While the cointegrating equation results suggest that renewable energy has contributed to carbon mitigation, nonlinear estimation and quantile regression propose that the marginal mitigation impact from renewable energy might be weakening. 1% increase in renewable energy supply and the share of renewable in energy mix has mitigated carbon emissions by 0.134% and 1.260%, respectively. The empirical results insist that policymakers discover alternatives to decarbonize the energy sector, other than renewable energy expansion. Options to achieve carbon neutrality include heat expansion via unused heat, that is, national energy system innovation towards wasted energy utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates income and price elasticities of residential electricity demand and electricity rebound effect using the annual panel data of 18 European Union countries. Quantile regression results show that income elasticities are higher in lower quantiles, whereas price elasticities are uniform in all quantiles. Three fixed-effect estimators provide consistent results, with the scale of long-run income and price elasticities increasing compared to short-run elasticities. In the short run, the derived elasticities of electricity demand are 0.08 for income and −0.03 for price, whereas in the long run, they are at 1.17 for income and −0.43 for price. In addition, asymmetric price response is observed, estimating the rebound effect in the decomposed price model. Our empirical results suggest that European governments implement policies that accelerate improvements to electricity efficiency and invigorate the retail electricity market, making residential electricity prices more transparent to consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper examines the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) relationship through a heterogeneous panel analysis of 34 Annex I countries for the 1990 to 2016 period. We confirm the long-run equilibrium relationship between carbon emissions, trade openness, fossil fuel usage, and GDP through the panel cointegration tests that is robust to cross-sectional dependence. Overall, our finding is that the empirical results show no consistent evidence of the EKC hypothesis in Annex I countries via mean group and long-run estimation. Country-specific estimation shows that only 5 of the 34 countries support the EKC hypothesis. From the cointegration test to long-run vector estimation, we indirectly show that fossil fuel usage can distort the EKC results by causing endogeneity, since being strong is related to economic growth. From the synthesized statistics of empirical results, Annex I countries do not follow the EKC relationship. This could imply that because no mitigation has been achieved, climate change can become a much more serious issue, although country-specific results show that mitigation is constantly in progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the determinants of carbon emissions based on energy consumption, analyzing the data of 30 countries using nuclear energy for the period 1990–2014. Renewable energy and nuclear energy consumption are adopted as determinants, and real coal price and real GDP are used as additive variables. The panel cointegration analysis and Granger causality tests are conducted to investigating the relationship among the variables. First, the panel cointegration test results suggest that long-run equilibrium relationship exists among carbon emissions, renewable energy consumption, and nuclear energy consumption. The results of the long-run cointegrating vector and Granger causality tests indicate that nuclear energy does not contribute to carbon reduction unlike renewable energy. Thus, the development and expansion of renewable, not nuclear, energy are essential to prevent global warming. Though there is a concern that rising energy prices caused by the expansion of renewable energy may impact the economy negatively, our empirical results also imply that renewable energy consumption will promote economic growth. In other words, our evidence shows that using and expanding renewable energy is both economically and ecologically beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers a novel perspective on the utilization of renewable energy as a means of hedging against international oil prices. Countries with limited reserves of traditional energy sources, such as crude oil, are susceptible to the risks associated with international energy prices due to geopolitical factors. This paper examines the interplay between energy consumption, economic growth, and international oil prices through panel analysis. The data employed in this study encompasses 25 net oil-importing countries from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) between 1990 and 2019. Our long-run vector estimation results suggest that oil prices can pose an economic risk that diminishes gross output, while renewable energy consumption can mitigate the risk associated with oil prices. The Granger causality results among the variables support the feedback and conservation hypotheses for energy and renewable energy, respectively. Moreover, our findings indicate that oil prices may drive the expansion of renewable energy due to concerns about external risks. Policymakers should contemplate the utilization of renewable energy as a means of hedging against the risks associated with traditional resources. This study contributes to the extant literature on the energy-growth nexus by providing a fresh perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between coal consumption and economic growth for 30 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries and 32 non-OECD countries for 1990-2013 using a multivariate dependent panel analysis. For the analysis, we conducted the common factor defactorization process, unit root test, cointegration test, long-run cointegrating vector, and Granger causality test. Our results suggest the following: First, there is no long-run relationship between coal consumption and economic growth in OECD countries; however, in non-OECD countries, the relationship does exist. Second, excessive coal usage may hinder economic growth in the long run. Lastly, the growth hypothesis (coal consumption affects economic growth positively) is supported in the short run for non-OECD countries. As coal consumption has a positive effect on economic growth in the short run and a negative effect in the long run, energy conservation policies may have adverse effects only in the short run. Thus, non-OECD countries should gradually switch their energy mix to become less coal-dependent as they consider climate change. Moreover, a transfer of technology and financial resources from developed to developing countries must be encouraged at a global level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we compared the impacts of energy transition, efficiency, and electrification on carbon emissions using regulation indicators and empirical data. We constructed an empirical model to examine the relationship between energy variables and carbon emissions for 109 countries using Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE) score data from 2010 to 2017. The fixed-effect estimation model and quantile regression with fixed effects showed consistent results. Regulations on energy efficiency contributed to carbon mitigation with 0.003% elasticity. Moreover, a 1% increase in the energy intensity increased carbon emissions by 0.74% owing to inefficient energy usage, implying that energy efficiency is the most effective energy policy tool for climate mitigation. While regulations on energy transition generally did not have a significant impact, the harshness of regulations on energy transition had a meaningful impact on carbon mitigation. Electrification consistently increased carbon emissions by increasing accessibility to energy for 0.23% elasticity, which was 0.11% in the case of regulation. Accordingly, the electrification policy should be implemented after the energy transition policy in the generation sector. Finally, countries should decrease the energy intensity by implementing regulations and policies for improving energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]