Does renewable energy consumption affect ecological footprints in Saudi Arabia? A bootstrap causality test

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between renewable energy consumption and ecological footprint in Saudi Arabia by considering the important role of economic growth in the environmental function during 1980–2017 periods. Capital and trade openness are determinants of environmental degradation. To determine the cointegration between the variables, we relied on the bootstrap autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test. We also used the Granger causality based on the bootstrap ARDL approach to identify causal relationships between the factors of environmental degradation in the presence of structural break. The empirical results show the presence of cointegration between variables with a structural break. Furthermore, the results of the ARDL model state that an increase in human capital and renewable energy consumption improves environmental quality (decreasing the ecological footprint), while an increase in trade openness and GDP deteriorates environmental quality (increasing the ecological footprint). In the short run, the results of the VECM model show the existence of a bidirectional causal relationship between human capital and trade openness. GDP causes the ecological footprint, while human capital causes renewable energy consumption. Moreover, there is a causal relationship from GDP and renewable energy consumption to trade openness. In the long run, all variables cause renewable energy consumption on the one hand, and trade openness on the other. In view of these results, policy makers have an interest in implementing favorable measures that reduce the ecological footprint and improve the quality of the environment by using renewable energy consumption as an economic tool.