Energy Consumption and Economic Growth Nexus in China: Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)

Abstract

This paper intends to investigate the nexus between energy consumption, carbon dioxide emission, total export and economic growth of China from 1971 to 2014. This study adopted Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds test to examine the existence of short-run and long-run relationships among the variables. Empirical findings indicated that energy consumption contribute to economic growth while carbon dioxide emission is impeding the growth. There is a positive long-run relationship between both energy consumption and total export with economic growth of China. However, a negative relationship is observed between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth. Hence, in terms of policy recommendation, policymakers can implement a balance environment-economic policy; reduce the carbon dioxide emission by imposing carbon tax; promote renewable energy among the industries and households and promoting reserves forest policy is needed for aspiration of sustainable growth for both environmental and economic.