The nexus between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in Morocco.

Abstract

It is known that the transition to renewable energy can be a lever for the growth of both developed and developing countries. Thus, the whole world starts to become aware of the importance of the development of renewable energies, which became a priority for the future. In this context, Morocco belongs to the countries that set up some development policies for renewable energies in the short and medium term. Furthermore, this article investigates and analyzes the nexus and the relationship between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and economic growth for Morocco over the period going from 1990 to 2014 using the auto-regressive distributed lag model approach and the Granger causality test. The empirical results support that renewable energies in Morocco start to give their positive effects on the economic dimension of sustainable development and it is found that there is causality from renewable energy consumption to economic growth and from economic growth to CO2 emissions. However, the Moroccan government and private companies must look for innovative methods to finance renewable energy projects. In addition, these technologies can be the best substitute for fossil fuels: firstly, in order to reduce the burden of energy costs on the Moroccan economy (the energy bill in Morocco continues to rise, more than 100 billion DH in 2012); secondly, to strengthen its competitiveness without affecting the economic growth of the country.