Electricity consumption in Australia: the role of clean energy in reducing CO2 emissions

Abstract

Electricity consumption is the primary source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Australia. Hence, this research study aims to analyse the role of clean energy consumption on CO2 emissions and electricity consumption in Australia by making use of yearly data, 1980–2014 and a battery of time series econometric techniques. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method is employed to investigate the short- and long-run estimates, while the Bayer and Hanck (2013) test is used to examine the cointegration relationship among the variables. The results from the ARDL technique show that a 1% increase in clean energy consumption reduces per capita CO2 emissions and per capita electricity consumption by 5.50% and 1.19%, respectively in the long-run. The findings also confirm a significant long-run association among the variables. As such, it is emphasized that the government should take further initiatives towards a wider deployment of clean energy use, along with sustainable urbanization to reduce per capita electricity consumption and CO2 emissions in Australia.