Title: Carbon emissions, energy consumption, trade openness and economic growth in 12 Asia-Pacific economies: evidence from panel co-integration results

Authors: Wen-Cheng Lu

Addresses: Department of Economics and Finance, Ming Chuan University, 5 De-Ming Rd, Gui-Shan Township, Taoyuan County, 333, Taiwan

Abstract: This article analyses the relationships among carbon emissions, energy consumption, trade and economic growth in 12 Asia-Pacific economies. The results indicate the existence of four long-run equilibrium relationships among carbon emissions, energy consumption, trade and economic growth. These four variables are causally related to each other. The inverted-U environment Kuznets hypothesis is supported. The long-run elasticity of carbon emissions with respect to trade and energy consumption were 0.21 and 1.13, respectively. Furthermore, the empirical evidence from a dynamic panel error-correction model revealed two short-run unidirectional causalities: from trade to energy consumption and from energy consumption to GDP growth. The short-run results also showed two bidirectional causal relationships between energy consumption and carbon emissions and between economic growth and carbon emissions. These results suggest that Asia-Pacific economies undertake energy policy to reduce carbon emissions by increasing the energy efficiency and substantially increasing the share of renewable energy in the overall energy usage.

Keywords: carbon emissions; trade; environmental Kuznets curve; economic growth; energy efficiency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGW.2018.094555

International Journal of Global Warming, 2018 Vol.16 No.2, pp.162 - 180

Received: 22 Mar 2017
Accepted: 31 Dec 2017

Published online: 06 Sep 2018 *

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