Greenhouse Gases Emissions and Economic Growth – Evidence Substantiating the Presence of Environmental Kuznets Curve in the Eu

Abstract

The paper considers the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) as the main variable of climate change and gross domestic product (GDP), using the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) technique. At early stages of economic growth, EKC indicates the increase of pollution related to the growing use of resources. However, when a certain level of income per capita is reached, the trend reverses and at a higher stage of development, further economic growth leads to improvement of the environment. According to the researchers, this implies that the environmental impact indicator is an inverted U-shaped function of income per capita. In this paper, the cubic equation is used to empirically check the validity of the EKC relationship for European countries. The analysis is based on the survey of EU-27, Norway and Switzerland in the period of 1995-2010. The data is taken from the Eurostat database. To gain some insights into the environmental trends in each country, the article highlights the specific relationship in the country based on the level of its development. The similarities between individual countries are analysed in order to identify their basic common features.

Energy security and sustainable competitiveness of industry development

“…Before a country reaches a certain point, it harms the environment; after it moves to the next, advanced stage of development, its further development stops being harmful to environment. This consistent pattern is known as Kuznets curve (Ahmad & Al Sayed, 2013;Čiegis, Štreimikienė, & Zavadskas, 2008;Culas, 2012;Fosten, Morley, & Taylor, 2012;Huang, Lee, & Wu, 2008;Iwata, Okada, & Samreth, 2010;Lapinskienė, Tvaronavičienė, & Vaitkus, 2014;Saboori & Sulaiman, 2013).…”

“…Scientists dealing with Kuznets curve work on questions related to facilitating transition to the stage of development, where a complex set of means is being adopted (policy tunnel in order to push trajectory of Kuznetz curve down) (Lapinskienė et al, 2014).…”

Energy Security and Energy Efficiency Issues: Household Perspective in European Countries

“…Increasing demand of oil in Asia, Europe's dependency on gas and environmental degradation due to increase in energy use become problems under consideration. Hence energy availability represents the classical, or early characteristics of energy security, while affordability and acceptability may be conditionally called "new" characteristics, which are introduced in attempt to address contemporary issues of global development, such as increasing demand of energy, triggered by increasing population and respective increase of economic activities, and consequent environmental degradation (Dudzevičiūtė 2012;Tvaronavičienė 2012Tvaronavičienė , 2014Antanavičienė 2014;Balitskiy et al 2014;Balkytė, Tvaronavičienė 2010;Bilevičienė, Bilevičiūtė 2015;Caurkubule, Rubanovskis 2014;Corneliu, Tamošiūnienė 2015;Dezellus et al 2015;Lapinskienė et al 2014Lapinskienė et al , 2013Peker et al 2014;Rakauskienė 2014;Vosylius et al 2013;Tvaronavičienė et al 2014;Raudeliūnienė et al 2014;Jefremov, Rubanovskis 2015;Vasiliūnaitė 2014;Bistrova et al 2014;Borshchevska 2015).…”

Net Present Value Evaluation of Energy Production and Consumption in Repeated Reverse Logistics

“…Lich, Tournemaine (2013) show how pollution influence allocation of residents and activities which also need to be evaluated in study of economic and environmental equilibrium. Using the environmental Kuznets curve (Lapinskiene et al 2014) show that when a certain level of income per capita is reached, further economic growth leads to improvement of the environment. This paper is a step to study of such improvement.…”