Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 emissions: The case of Arctic countries

Highlight
- This study examines the EKC hypothesis in the Arctic nations.
- An ARDL modeling approach is applied.
- Our results provide little evidence of the existence of the EKC for the Arctic.
- Energy consumption worsens the environment.

The main new contribution of this paper is to examine the Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis using time series data at individual country levels. Empirical focus is on the assessment of income per capita on CO2 emissions in the Arctic countries by taking into account the role of energy consumption. An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modeling approach to cointegration is applied to annual data for the period 1960-2010. The results provide little evidence of the existence of the EKC hypothesis for the Arctic countries. We also find that economic growth has a beneficial effect on the environment only in some Arctic countries. Finally, energy consumption is found to have a detrimental effect on the environment in most countries.