Energy Consumption In South Africa Research Articles

Unveiling the dynamic nexuses between foreign investment, trade openness, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions in South Africa: A vector error correction model approach

Amidst the rising carbon emissions posing significant challenges for the global environment, there exists an inadequate recognition of the profound implications associated with foreign investment, trade openness, and energy consumption in South Africa. This study investigates the dynamic relationship among foreign investment, trade, energy, and the interactive effect of foreign investment and trade openness on environmental pollution in South Africa using time series data from 1990 to 2020. The results from the Johansen cointegration analysis and vector error correction model confirm a sustained long-term relationship among foreign investment, trade, energy, and CO2 emissions. This suggests that any deviations from CO2 emissions equilibrium would gradually self-adjust autonomously. This study reveals the long-run positive effects of trade openness and energy consumption on environmental pollution, while foreign investment exhibits a persistent negative impact on environmental pollution in the long run. Economic growth reduces CO2 emissions, while population growth and inflation are detrimental to the environment in the long run. The interaction between foreign investment and trade reduces environmental pollution in the short and long run. The Granger causality tests show a two-way causal relationship between population growth and CO2 emissions and a one-way causal connection among other variables, enlightening the linkage among these critical factors. The study offers several policy suggestions including environmentally friendly trade practices, investing in energy efficiency and transition, and promoting sustainable foreign investment in South Africa to achieve long-term economic sustainability while curbing environmental impact.

Symmetric Impact of Carbon Emissions on Poverty in South Africa: New Evidence from ARDL Bounds Test

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between poverty and carbon emissions in South Africa covering the period between 1994 and 2020. The study employed the ARDL bounds test to assess the existence of a long run relationship between the variables. The results evidenced existence of a long run relationship between poverty, carbon emissions, economic growth and renewable energy consumption in South Africa. The results are such that carbon emissions have a positive and a significant effect on poverty in the long run. Therefore, with CO2 emissions having a positive influence on poverty, causes more losses in the socioeconomic system and reduces the ability of the population to cope with poverty. Therefore, it is recommended that the government should promote the growth of the South African carbon market, increase enterprise involvement through acceptable price and quota allocation, and work in tandem with other environmental measures to promote sustainable development. This will help alleviate poverty in South Africa.

Testing the effects of banking development, economic growth and foreign direct investment on renewable energy in South Africa

AbstractThe world's climate‐related policies need to be revised to combat environmental issues. Therefore, adopting renewable energy technologies in conjunction with energy efficiency measures are needed to make safe pathways to reduce over 90% of energy related CO2. In this context, this study intends to assess the influence of foreign direct investment (FDI), economic growth, and banking and development on renewable energy consumption in South Africa from 1970 to 2020. The study uses a novel ‘bootstrap Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)’ testing to empirically analyse the short and long links among the tested variables. The ARDL estimations demonstrate a FDI and economic growth have positive effect on renewable energy consumption. Furthermore, the outcomes reveal that banking sector development affects positively renewable energy use in long run. Therefore, it is suggested that government and playmakers of South Africa must make more efforts to link the economic and baking development with renewable energy by investing capital and funds in renewable energy infrastructure. It will not only boost the economy of the country but also provide an opportunity to clean and green the environment with decreasing rate of greenhouse gases emission like carbon dioxide.

Fiscal Policy, Oil Price, Foreign Direct Investment, and Renewable Energy—A Path to Sustainable Development in South Africa

Since South Africa is in pursuit of accomplishing the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, it has become pertinent to accelerate the desired energy transition. Against this background, this work aims to evaluate the effects of oil prices, fiscal policy, and foreign direct investment on renewable energy consumption in South Africa from 1979 to 2019. Using the novel Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach, this study finds that economic growth and taxation revenues positively promote renewable energy in South Africa. In contrast, the findings show that an increase in oil prices has a negative impact on renewable energy in both short and long periods. Likewise, the research shows that foreign direct investment was not found to enhance renewable energy. The findings from fully modified-OLS, dynamic ordinary least squares, and canonical cointegrating regression models corroborate the findings of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag method. For the Granger causality inference, the findings demonstrate that there is a one-way causal connection detected from economic growth to the consumption of renewable energy. Based on these outcomes, a policy framework has been offered to help South Africa to attain the sustainable development goals.

Testing the Effect of Oil Prices, Ecological Footprint, Banking Sector Development and Economic Growth on Energy Consumptions: Evidence from Bootstrap ARDL Approach

Energy generation from carbon fuels produces a major portion of the greenhouse gases that envelop the planet and trap the sun’s heat. Fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and gas, account for approximately 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and almost 90% of carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, there is an urgent need to finance cleaner, efficient, low-cost, sustainable, and energy-reliable alternative fuels. Therefore, we investigated the effect of oil prices, ecological footprint, banking sector development, and economic growth on energy consumption in South Africa. We employed the newly developed bootstrap autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to the link between explanatory antecedents and explained facets in the short and long term. The outcome of our study witnessed the positive and significant effect of economic growth and ecological footprint on energy consumption in the short and long run, in the case of South Africa. This suggests that a drastic boost in South African economic growth and environmental quality results in the increased use of energy. However, ARDL outcomes affirm that industrial structure has effects positively and significantly in the short run only. Moreover, oil price shocks have a negative and significant link with energy use in the short and long run, suggesting that in the case of South Africa, increased oil prices reduce the use of energy. Based on the evidence obtained from the results of our study, we proposed several policy suggestions and recommendations to the government authorities, policymakers, environmentalists, and other stakeholders in order to develop an energy strategy in line with sustainable economic growth and the environment.

Impact of Globalization and Renewable Energy Consumption on Environmental Degradation: A Lesson for South Africa

South Africa is one of Africa's most polluted countries, with rising CO2 emissions posing a threat. South Africa must discover ways of minimizing pollution and take necessary steps before it is too late in order to achieve sustainable growth. For this purpose, this research assesses the ecological consequences of globalization, nonrenewable energy use, economic growth and renewable energy consumption in South Africa. The study leverages on the non-linearity advantages of the novel quantile on quantile regression (QQR) method for a robust analysis as opposed to the use of conventional linear approaches, thereby overcoming conspicuous shortfalls in extant studies, while offering a detailed explanation of the overall dependency structure between CO2 emissions and globalization, nonrenewable energy use and renewable energy use using a dataset covering the period between 1970 and 2018. The outcomes suggest that nonrenewable energy use, globalization, and economic growth contribute to environmental degradation in the majority of the quantiles, while the effect of renewable energy use on CO2 is not strong at all quantiles. The study highlights that economic expansion, nonrenewable energy use and globalization play key roles in in mitigating environmental sustainability in South Africa, while renewable energy is not sufficient to meet environmental requirements.

Disaggregating the environmental effects of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption in South Africa: fresh evidence from the novel dynamic ARDL simulations approach

Disaggregating the environmental effects of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption in South Africa: fresh evidence from the novel dynamic ARDL simulations approach

Asymmetric causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth: fresh evidence from some emerging countries.

Renewable energy is an important alternative energy source in terms of both sustainable growth and climate change. In this paper, the causality nexus between renewable energy consumption and economic growth is analyzed in 15 emerging countries covering the period from 1990 to 2015. The paper adopts the bootstrap panel causality test which is developed by (Kónya, Econ Model 23:978–992, 2006) to consider the cross-sectional dependence. The results of (Kónya, Econ Model 23:978–992, 2006) prove the validity of the neutrality hypothesis in all countries. Then, we analyze asymmetric causality among the variables. Asymmetric test denotes a causality from negative shocks of economic growth to negative shocks of renewable energy consumption in South Africa, Thailand, and Turkey. Thus, a negative shock in economic growth hampers renewable energy consumption in these countries. Our results demonstrate the consequences of the application of disaggregated data in the analyses.

The Relationship between Financial Development and Energy Consumption in South Africa

This paper examines the nexus between financial development and energy consumption in South Africa. To determine the long run and short run relationship between financial development and energy consumption in South Africa, the paper uses an Auto Regressive Distributed Lag bounds test (ARDL) and Granger causality test to establish the type of correlation between 1980 and 2018. ARDL bounds testing method offers concrete long-run estimates and t-statistics as it is flexible whether the adopted variables are I(0) or I(1). The study used per capita (kilogram, kg of oil equivalent) to measure total energy consumption, domestic credit to the private sector (percentage of gross domestic product, GDP) to measure financial development, real GDP growth (to capture economic growth), industrial value added (percentage of GDP) to measure industrialization, and urban population (percentage of total population) to capture urbanization. Results from ARDL showed that the relationship between financial development and energy consumption is positive in nature both in short-run and long-run. Granger causality test results revealed unidirectional causality from financial development to energy consumption. Policymakers need to formulate policy reforms that channels more credit to private sector development in order to bolster more energy use in South Africa. There ought to be proper balance between financial development and energy consumption to avoid electricity crisis.

The Sustainability of Renewable Energy Consumption in South Africa

Renewable energy sources are essential in reducing carbon emission levels and promoting a global green economy. The aim of this study was to examine the sustainability of renewable energy consumption per capita in Africa by using the annual data for the period 1965-2018. For this purpose, in addition to traditional unit root tests, various unit root tests taking into account different structural changes were utilized in the study. According to the obtained results, the renewable energy consumption series in Africa was found to be stable. Thus, it was concluded that sustainability was valid because the effects of one-unit shocks in energy use were not permanent..

Coal energy consumption beat renewable energy consumption in South Africa: Developing policy framework for sustainable development

Globally we are at a crossroad whereby energy production and consumption in themselves is partly blamed for climate change issues and global warming menace. The question that comes to heart is do we stop seeking energy production and consumption? of course no. Thus, there is a need for innovation on part of economies as they seek energy for sustainable development. This country-specific study focuses on South African, which reflects the above highlights menace in no small measure where her economic growth trajectory is plagued with high CO2 emission. To this end, we explore the nexus between coal energy consumption, economic growth, renewable energy consumption and CO2 emission between annual periods of 1980–2017. This study applied a battery of econometric techniques to underscore the relationship between the outlined variables. According to the ARDL bounds test to cointegration in conjunction with Kripfganz and Schneider (2018) critical approximation p-values both affirm long-run equilibrium relationship between study variables. Empirical evidence gives credence to the growth-induced pollution emission in South Africa as reported by the Autoregressive distributed lag Method, fully modified ordinary least squares and dynamic ordinary least squares as robustness test for soundness of analysis. This finding suggests that South Africa's economic growth trajectory is not clean. This preposition is resonated with the result of coal energy consumption also dampening environmental quality. Financial development shows strong statistical strength to improve the quality of the environment. These outcomes are indicative for policymakers as there is urgent need to energy transition from conventional energy based on fossil fuel (coal energy) to renewable energy mix which is more environmentally friendly should be pursued in South Africa.

Prediction of the Energy Consumption Variation Trend in South Africa based on ARIMA, NGM and NGM-ARIMA Models

South Africa’s energy consumption takes up about one-third of that in the whole African continent, ranking the first place in Africa. However, there are few researches on the prediction of energy consumption in South Africa. In this study, based on the data of South Africa’s energy consumption during 1998–2016, Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model, nonlinear grey model (NGM) and nonlinear grey model–autoregressive integrated moving average (NGM-ARIMA) model are adopted to predict South Africa’s energy consumption during 2017–2030. After using these NGM, ARIMA and NGM-ARIMA, the mean absolute percent errors (MAPE) are 2.827%, 2.655% and 1.772%, respectively, which indicates that the predicted result has very high reliability. The prediction results show that the energy consumption in South Africa will keep increasing with the growth rate of about 7.49% in the next 14 years. This research result will provide scientific basis for the policy adjustment of energy supply and demand in South Africa and the prediction techniques used in the research will have reference function for the energy consumption study in other African countries.

Ecological footprint, urbanization, and energy consumption in South Africa: including the excluded.

The study explores the relationship between ecological footprint, urbanization, and energy consumption by applying the ARDL estimation technique on data spanning 1965-2014 for South Africa. After applying the unit root test that accounts for a break in the data, the Bayer and Hanck (J Time Ser Anal 34:83-95, 2013) combined cointegration test affirms cointegrating relationship among the variables. Findings further reveal that economic growth and financial development exact a deteriorating impact on the environment in the short run. However, the same was not true for both energy use and urbanization. While urbanization and energy use promote environmental quality in the long run, financial development and economic growth degrade it further. The long-run findings of our study are confirmed to be robust as reported by the fully modified OLS (FMOLS), dynamic OLS (DOLS), and the canonical cointegrating regression (CCR) estimates. The direction of causality supports the energy-led growth hypothesis for South Africa. Policy outcomes and directions, and the possibility of promoting sustainable growth without degrading the environment are discussed.

Energy consumption and financial development in South Africa

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between energy consumption and financial development in South Africa during the period 1980-2013. In order to address the omission of variable bias, the study has included economic growth as an intermittent variable between financial development and energy consumption. Unlike some previous studies, this study uses three proxies for financial development: i) domestic credit to the private sector as a percentage of GDP as a proxy for financial institutions’ depth; ii) bank credit to bank deposits as a proxy for financial institutions’ stability; and iii) bank lending-deposit spread as a proxy for financial institutions’ efficiency. Using the ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration and Granger-causality test, the obtained results show that there is a distinct long-run unidirectional causal flow from financial development to energy consumption in South Africa. This applies irrespective of which proxy has been used to measure the level of financial development. The study also finds that there is a long-run unidirectional causality from economic growth to energy consumption, and a unidirectional causality from economic growth to financial development when bank lending-deposit interest rates spread is used as a proxy for financial development. This, therefore, implies that energy consumption in South Africa is largely driven by the growth-led financial development in the long run.

The interaction of energy consumption and economic growth in South Africa: assessment from the bounds testing approach

The article empirically examined the causal interactions between energy consumption and economic growth in South Africa for the period 1970 to 2015 using the ARDL-bounds testing method. The article found a positive long-run cointegrating relationship between real economic growth and energy consumption in South Africa. In addition, the research found that although there is unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to economic growth in the short-run, there is long-run bidirectional causality between the two variables as indicated by the coefficients of the error correction terms which were negative and significant as predicted by theory. This means that reducing energy consumption adversely affect real economic growth in both the short- and the long-run; thus, South Africa should adopt a more vigorous energy policy.

The interaction of energy consumption and economic growth in South Africa: assessment from the bounds testing approach

Researchers concur that energy plays a very significant role in the economic growth and development of any country and that increasing access to modernized systems of energy is critical to unlocking enhanced economic and social development in any country. In the light of this, the current article has empirically examined the causal interactions between energy consumption and economic growth in South Africa for the period 1970 to 2015 using the ARDL-bounds testing method. The results show that all the variables were found to be integrated of order one. The empirical results obtained fully support a positive long-run cointegrating relationship between real economic growth and energy consumption in South Africa. The article used trade openness and financial development as control variables in the model. The research found that although there is unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to economic growth in the short-run, there is long-run bidirectional causality between the two variables as indicated by the coefficients of the error correction terms which were found to be negative and significant as predicted by theory. This means that reducing energy consumption adversely affect real economic growth in both the short- and the long-run; thus, South Africa should adopt a more vigorous energy policy.

The Relationship Between Energy Consumption, Economic Growth, Inflation and Trade Openness: An Analysis for Fragile Five Countries

Energy is one of the most important dynamics of economic growth all over the world. Specially developing countries are in need of much more enery to provide economic growth. In this study, the relationship between energy consumption, economic growth, inflation and trade openness is exaimined by using structural VAR model for fragile five countries which have similar characteristics in terms of macroeconomic indicators. The analysis carried out with annual data that contains 1971-2013 period for fragile countries which contains of Turkey, South Africa, India, Indonesia and Brazil. According to the empirical results of the study, shocks that emerged in economic growth affect energy consumption positively but decreasingly in all countries. A substantial part of changes in energy consumption are explaned with economic growth in Turkey, India and Brazil. More than 80 percent of changes in energy consumption arise from energy consumption in South Africa and Indonesia.

Hearth and Home in Cape Town: African Women, Energy Resourcing, and Consumption in an Urban Environment

This article adds to the literature on energy consumption in South Africa through the contribution of a historical and gendered perspective. It focuses on how differing generations of African women in the apartheid (1948–1994) and post-apartheid periods resourced, consumed, and related to various types of fuels. "Energy histories" solicited from twenty-five African female residents of Cape Town across three generational cohorts show women's broad and complex engagement with the material fabric of the city. In an era of globalized access and technological change, electricity was increasingly seen as essential to a modern, "easy" lifestyle. Electrical appliances themselves provided a medium through which women questioned and brokered household power relations. Yet women also revealed a tenacious loyalty to older patterns of energy use. This was reflective of the historically uneven progress towards electrification of African townships, as well as issues more intimately related to gendered and generational dynamics.