This study examines the relationship between renewable and nuclear energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth by using the Granger causality and non-linear impulse response function in a business cycle in Spain. We estimate the threshold vector autoregression (TVAR) model on the basis of annual data from the period 1970–2018, which are disaggregated into quarterly data to obtain robust empirical results through avoiding a sample size problem. Our analysis reveals that economic growth and CO2 emissions are positively correlated during expansions but not during recessions. Moreover, we find that rising nuclear energy consumption leads to decreased CO2 emissions during expansions, while the impact of increasing renewable energy consumption on emissions is negative but insignificant. In addition, there is a positive feedback between nuclear energy consumption and economic growth, but unidirectional positive causality running from renewable energy consumption to economic growth in upturns. Our findings do indicate that both nuclear and renewable energy consumption contribute to a reduction in emissions; however, the rise in economic activity, leading to a greater increase in emissions, offsets this positive impact of green energy. Therefore, a decoupling of economic growth from CO2 emissions is not observed. These results demand some crucial changes in legislation targeted at reducing emissions, as green energy alone is insufficient to reach this goal.

This study explores the impact of clean energy and non-renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions and economic growth within two phases (formative and expansion) of renewable energy diffusion for three selected countries (France, Spain, and Sweden). The vector autoregression (VAR) model is estimated on the basis of annual data disaggregated into quarterly data. The Granger causality results reveal distinctive differences in the causality patterns across countries and two phases of renewables diffusion. Clean energy consumption contributes to a decline of emissions more clearly in the expansion phase in France and Spain. However, this effect seems to be counteracted by the increases in emissions due to economic growth and non-renewable energy consumption. Therefore, clean energy consumption has not yet led to a decoupling of economic growth from emissions in France and Spain; in contrast, the findings for Sweden evidence such a decoupling due to the neutrality between economic growth and emissions. Generally, the findings show that despite the enormous growth of renewables and active mitigation policies, CO2 emissions have not substantially decreased in selected countries or globally. Focused and coordinated policy action, not only at the EU level but also globally, is urgently needed to overhaul existing fossil-fuel economies into low-carbon economies and ultimately meet the relevant climate targets.

This paper aims to look at the long-run equilibrium relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth (the EKC hypothesis) in an asymmetric framework using the non-linear threshold cointegration. In order to avoid the problem of omitted variables bias, the dynamic relationship between pollutant emissions, economic development and energy consumption are also examined (the extended EKC model). The research hypothesis is that the economic growth decouples from CO2 emissions growth, i.e. the EKC hypothesis holds. The empirical study is carried out for the European Union countries (EU-14) divided into three groups depending on a category of knowledge-advanced economies in order to explain the differences in the dynamic linkage between CO2 emissions and economic growth, as well as in the energy consumption impact on this cointegrating relationship. We have found that the EKC hypothesis is valid for the most high-level and some middle-level knowledge advanced economies. The addition of energy consumption to the standard EKC model has improved the results in terms of the presence of linear or threshold cointegration for all low-level knowledge based economies. Moreover, the causality pattern between CO2 emissions and income has changed after energy consumption adding to the EKC model and some similarities are found in the countries belonging to the same category of knowledge-advanced economies.

The aim of the paper is the investigation of the long-run relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in the Central and East European countries with special emphasis on a decoupling of carbon emissions and economic growth. The implementation of threshold cointegration with asymmetric adjustment enables detecting the changes in the non-linear pollutant-income relationship in the long-run, and in consequence allows to identify the non-linear causal link among CO 2 emissions, GDP and energy consumption in a more comprehensive way and formulate more reliable recommendations for energy policy. The main contribution of the paper lies in testing the standard EKC hypothesis and its extended version by adding energy consumption and time trend for the CEE countries in order to test the robustness of the results. We also concentrate on the identification of the short-run and long-run causal relationship between per capita CO 2 emissions and per capita income using threshold error correction models (T-ECM) and momentum threshold error correction model (M-TECM). There is significant evidence that the inverted U-shape (EKC) holds between per capita CO 2 and GDP per capita for the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania meaning that economic growth decouples from CO 2 emissions. This finding can be interpreted in terms of effective environmental policy directed into the reduction of CO 2 emissions in these countries. We also find that temporary disequilibrium from the long-run EKC is corrected in an asymmetric fashion for Romania, Slovenia, Estonia in the framework of the standard EKC model, and additionally for the Czech Republic and Bulgaria (besides Slovenia and Estonia) based on the extended specification of EKC model.

This paper applies the threshold cointegration technique developed by Enders and Siklos (2001) to investigate the impact of an oil price changes on changes in production and inflation in the presence of structural break in seven European Union countries. This technique will allow for a different speed of adjustment to the long-run equilibrium depending on whether production in selected economies is above or below the long-run relationship. Given the presence of asymmetric cointegration between oil prices, production and inflation, we estimate threshold error correction models to examine long-and short-run Granger causality. We found evidence for cointegration with asymmetric adjustment in the case of France, Denmark and the total EU.