An investigation of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and economic growth nexus using industrial and residential energy consumption

Abstract

Our study shows that links between economic growth and energy consumption (both expressed in per capita terms) differed for renewables and non-renewables for income panels over the period 1971 to 2011. Renewables are mainly found to support the neutrality hypothesis. Only renewable totals in low and lower middle income (LLMI) countries are found to drive economic growth. The feedback, growth and conservative hypotheses strongly feature with non-renewables (total and industrial). Our results are derived by linking different definitions of energy consumption with economic growth for 89 countries divided into LLMI; upper middle income (UMI); and high income (HI) panels.