What if Energy Time Series are not Independent? Implications for Energy-GDP Causality Analysis

Time series of electricity, petroleum products, and renewables are found to be highly correlated with total energy consumption. Applying this insight to the huge literature on energy-GDP causality explains that the results of energy-GDP causality tests frequently coincide with the results of energy type-GDP tests. Using the test by Toda-Yamamoto in combination with a cointegration-based testing approach, we detect such cases of concordance for 92 per cent of the countries in our sample of 65 countries. As a consequence, it is difficult to draw specific economic conclusions regarding single types of energy from bivariate causality analysis.