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This study aims to investigate the influence and the direct causal relationship between energy consumption and the selected explanatory variables in the Nigerian economic system. Using ARDL‐VECM over the period of 1972–2014, the results are that financial development exerts negative and significant influence on energy consumption. Trade openness and urbanisation exert positive and significant effect on energy consumption both in the short and long run, the active age (15–64) and old age (65 and >) have different effects on energy consumption. Although the number of the older population (age 65 and above) causes the energy consumption level to fall, the size of the working/active population (age 15–64) causes the energy consumption level to increase. Further results revealed (i) unidirectional causality runs from working population to energy consumption, (ii) uni‐directional causality runs from energy consumption to credit to private sector, (iii) uni‐directional from trade openness to real GDP per capita, (iv) bi‐directional causal relationship is observed between urbanisation and energy consumption, (v) bi‐directional relationship between trade openness and energy consumption. These findings may be a guide to policymakers in evaluating Nigerian economy's energy needs and effective energy policies needed to address environmental issues related to fossil fuel use.

At the heart of the post-COP26 era and the European Green deal lies the underlying goals in Europe targeting climate neutrality and zero pollution through tourism developments and promotion of economic well-being of regions. This study empirically investigates the dynamic linkages among tourism developments and emission while controlling for the influence of economic growth, trade, energy demand under the framework of Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (PARDL) using the top 12 tourist countries in the EU from 1995 to 2018. The findings are as follows: First, the study found that trade openness negatively influences emissions. Second, economic growth, tourism, and energy use positively and significantly influence emissions. Third, energy demand positively and significantly influences economic growth and tourism development in the short and long run. The study recommends additional tourism and energy development policies along with structures that rapidly drive economic activities to turn carbon-intensive economies into green economies.

The main objective of this study is to explore the dynamic relationship between the level of democracy and the amount of fossil fuel in the energy consumption mix in Nigeria over the period 1975–2020. To achieve this objective, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing method is applied. The results revealed that democracy has a positive and significant long (lasting) and short run (immediate) effects on the amount of fossil fuel in the energy consumption mix in Nigeria. However, the positive effect decreases significantly with an increase in the level of oil dependence in the short run. The results of this study in general support the view that high dependence of political democratic institution on oil wealth reduces the positive effects of democracy in making public goods available in oil-exporting economies. This study therefore recommend that diversification away from fossil fuel in energy consumption mix in Nigeria which may require formulating appropriate policies that will increase access to cleaner forms of energy (e.g. solar and wind energy) in the economy.