Carbon emissions, energy consumption and economic growth in Zimbabwe: investigating the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve within a developing economy context

Abstract

This article examines the short- and long-run association among carbon emissions, energy consumption and economic growth through deploying the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) using combined (aggregated) and separated (disaggregated) energy consumption data for Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2014. The ARDL bounds tests and Johansen cointegration tests found long-run relationships among the variables. In the long-run, total energy consumption and primary coal consumption produce statistically significant positive relationships with carbon emissions. However, petroleum consumption demonstrates a statistically significant negative association with carbon emissions. The results show the validity of the EKC in total energy and primary coal consumption in the long-run but are invalid for petroleum consumption. In the short run, the findings reveal that total energy, primary coal and petroleum consumption have statistically significant positive relationships with carbon emissions. Furthermore, in the short run, the EKC is evident in petroleum consumption but invalid in both total energy and primary coal consumption. The short- and long-run Granger causality tests results based on the VECM are also discussed. The article concludes that, if carbon emissions are to be reduced in developing economies, alternative energy sources in the form of green technologies should be adopted as substitutes for coal and petroleum.