Renewable energy intensity and efficiency of fossil energy fuels in the nordics: How environmentally efficient is the energy mix?

Abstract

In recent years, energy intensity-efficiency has improved in the Nordic states and largely among the European Union member states, thus accounting for the region's impressive performance in terms of environmental sustainability. Clearly, there is paucity of literature on the criticality of renewable energy efficiency/intensity as compared with disaggregated fossil fuel efficiency. To offer more novelty, environmental sustainability (de) merit of renewable energy intensity is compared with fossil (oil, natural gas, and coal) fuel efficiency in the panel of Nordic states over the period 1990–2020 by employing relevant econometric approaches such as the cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL). Importantly, the result shows that a percentage increase in renewable energy intensity mitigates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by ∼0.45% against ∼0.29% by oil energy efficiency in the long run, thus suggesting that environmental performance of renewable energy intensity outweighs the efficient use of oil fuel. Additionally, renewable energy intensity also outperforms efficient use of natural gas and coal energy by ∼0.51%–∼0.37% and ∼0.43%–∼0.17% respectively. However, economic growth and environmental-related innovations spur GHG emissions, implying that the Nordic countries are decoupling economic performance from environmental setbacks amidst structural shift via technological innovations. The results are considered formidable for the specificity of energy mix policy especially in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.