Renewable Energy Consumption, Economic Growth and CO2 Emissions : Evidence from Selected MENA Countries

This paper uses panel cointegration techniques to examine the causal relationship between renewable energy consumption, economic growth and CO2 emissions for a group of 12 MENA countries covering the annual period 1975-2008. The Granger-causality results indicate that there is no causal relationship between these variables in short run except a unidirectional causality running from renewable energy consumption to CO2 emissions. However, we find unidirectional causality running from economic growth and CO2 emissions to renewable energy consumption in long run. With panel FMOLS and DOLS estimates, we find that only CO2 emissions have an impact on renewable energy consumption. These results indicate that MENA countries don't find the best policy which can control the regulation of the renewable energy prices, which can help to take into account the stability in the economic growth structure, and which can also mitigate pollutant emissions