Abstract
This study contributes towards the realization of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 which aims “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” by investigating the role of per capita income in moderating the impact of energy use on carbon emissions. Using data from 28 selected African countries covering 1990 to 2019 and deploying the FGLS, PCSE, and MM-QR techniques, findings reveal, among others, that: at the 1% significance level, a percentage change in energy use leads to between 0.60% and 0.70% increase in carbon emissions, on average, ceteris paribus. Correspondingly, income shows to be a positive driver of emissions contributing between 0.87% and 0.84% percentage increase, on average, ceteris paribus. Also, per capita income attenuates the impact of energy use on emissions by between -0.27% and -0.23%, on average, ceteris paribus. However, significant heterogeneities occur across the sub-regions. Specifically, Southern Africa shows the largest energy contributor to emissions 1.65% while Central Africa contributes the most to aggravating emissions by 1.87% through increase in per capita income. West Africa shows the largest moderation effect at -0.56%. Across the quartiles, the effects of energy use and per capita are positive. Given these, we submit that the strong correlation between energy usage and per capita income (i.e. economic growth) poses a dilemma for African economies in their drive for growth. Leaving room for trade-offs. Perhaps, the lesson is that as African countries seek for more development without contributing to carbon emissions, governments should invest more in renewable energy.
Highlights
Economic growth and development is hinged on activities involving the production, transportation and consumption of energy, it becomes nearly impossible for economic progress to occur without considerably impacting the environment via the emission of carbon dioxide
Other outcomes are that a positive relationship exists between economic growth and environmental degradation while a negative association exist between urbanization and carbon emission such that 1% increase in gross domestic product (GDP) will induce a 1.3% and 1.82% increase in emissions in both the long- and short-run respectively
The results reveal that longrun relationship exist among carbon emission, renewable energy consumption and nuclear energy consumption
Summary
Economic growth and development is hinged on activities involving the production, transportation and consumption of energy, it becomes nearly impossible for economic progress to occur without considerably impacting the environment via the emission of carbon dioxide. Energy use and the role of per capita income on carbon emissions in Africa impacts” is a daunting task for developing economies like Africa. This is because the kind of energy used in Africa increasingly contributes to environmental problems [3,4]. The first is a linear model that explores the direct relation between energy use, income and carbon emissions while the second model is a moderation model which is the inclusion of an interaction term into the first model Further to addressing these questions, we make the following contributions to the literature: firstly, an unbalanced panel is engaged to allow for a sizeable number of African countries. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: section 2 reviews the extant literature; section 3 details the data and empirical approach; section 4 presents and discusses the results; and section 5 concludes
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