The impact of non-clean energy consumption on economic growth: Evidence from symmetric and asymmetric analyses in the US

Abstract

Non-clean energy consumption is one of the key components of environmental quality. The current study investigates the symmetric and asymmetric effects of non-clean energy consumption (total fossil fuel consumption) on economic growth by including clean energy consumption (nuclear electric power consumption and total renewable energy consumption) as well as capital and financial development in the production function. The linear autoregressive distributed lag and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approaches were applied to conduct symmetric and asymmetric analyses in the US. The range of analysis is from 1960 to 2015. Ultimately, the study’s findings indicate that non-clean energy has an asymmetric effect on economic growth. In other words, improving environmental quality (by decreasing non-clean energy consumption) will reduce economic growth in the long term, but not in the short term. This research is therefore applicable for policymakers in the US.