Nexus Between Renewable Energy Consumption, Financial Development, and Economic Growth: Evidence from IEA Countries

Abstract

The need for energy sources is increasing day by day. However, limited energy resources lead economies to use renewable energy resources. This paper explores the relations between renewable energy consumption, financial development, and economic growth. The study employs ARDL approach to investigate the longterm and short-term cointegration correlations between variables. The current paper focuses on the period 1996-2017 to investigate whether financial development indicators can play a role on renewable energy consumption for twelve IEA countries. According to panel cointegration test results, long-term variables are statistically significant. Also economic growth is observed affecting renewable energy consumption positively in the short term. According to panel causality test results in the short-term there is relation between financial development and renewable energy consumption, and economic growth and renewable energy consumption. Finally, the use of subcomponents of financial development indicator have efficiently captured the different aspects of financial system affecting renewable energy consumption.