Energy intensity and its determinants in OPEC countries.

This study investigates the roles of trade openness, technological innovation, and energy price in energy intensity in OPEC countries using panel Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) approaches in a dynamic heterogeneous panel setting to analyze panel data over the period 1990–2016. The investigation affirms that trade openness plays a key role in diminishing energy intensity and demonstrates that the innovation is insignificantly associated with energy intensity, while renewable energy is significantly related energy intensity. The robustness check confirms that the findings from ARDL approach are consistent with Dumitrescue-Hurlin Panel causality and Cross-Sectional Auto-Regressive Distributed Lags (CS-ARDL) tests. • This paper estimates the role of trade openness, innovation, and energy price on energy intensity. • Trade openness is found to be a driving factor in reducing energy intensity. • Innovation is insignificantly associated with energy intensity. • Renewable energy plays a critical role in reducing energy intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]