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This study investigates the relationship between foreign capital inflows and energy consumption by incorporating economic growth, exports and currency devaluation in energy demand function for the case of Pakistan. The long-run and short-run effects are examined via ARDL bounds testing procedure. Foreign capital inflows and currency devaluation (economic growth and exports) decrease (increase) energy consumption in long-run. The results confirm a feedback effect between foreign capital inflows and energy consumption. These findings would be helpful to policy makers in designing comprehensive economic and energy policies for utilizing foreign capital inflows as a tool for optimal use of energy sources to enhance economic development in long run.

Economically developed countries have been able to reduce their poverty level, strengthen their social and political institutions, improve their quality of life, preserve natural environments and achieve political stability [Barro (1996); Easterly (1999); Dollar and Kraay (2002a); Fajnzylber, Lederman, et al. (2002)]. After the World War II, most of the countries adopted aggressive economic policies to improve the growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP). The neoclassical growth models imply that during the evolution between steady states; technology, exogenous rate of savings, population growth and technical progress generate higher growth levels [Solow (1956)]. Endogenous growth model developed by Romer (1986) and Lucas (1988) argue that permanent increase in growth rate depends on the assumption of constant and increasing returns to capital.1 Similarly, Barro and Lee (1994) investigate the empirical association between human capital and economic growth. They seem to support endogenous growth model by Romer (1990) that highlight the role of human capital in economic activity. Fischer (1993) argues that long-term growth is negatively linked with inflation and positively correlated with better fiscal performance and factual foreign exchange markets. In the context of developing countries, investment both in capital and human capital, labour force, ability to adapt technological changes, open trade polices and low inflation are necessary for economic growth.

The group of seven (G-7) countries are seven of the most advanced global nations. Yet, these nations have not been able to achieve environmentally sustainable economic growth (EG) in the past. Consequently, despite growing economically, the environmental quality in the G-7 countries has persistently deteriorated. Hence, the present study examined the environmental impacts associated with EG, technological innovation, institutional quality (IQ), renewable energy consumption (RENE) and population using the carbon dioxide emission figures to measure environmental quality in the G-7 economies for the period 1996–2018. The econometric analyses involved the application of different estimation techniques that control the cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity issues in the data. Overall, the results indicated that greater EG and higher population size increase environmental pollution by boosting the carbon dioxide emission levels. In contrast, technological innovation, IQ improvement, and greater RENE were found to impede the carbon dioxide emission levels. In line with these key findings, several environmental development-related policies are recommended.

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