The role of renewable energy consumption in economic growth: Evidence from asymmetric causality

This paper investigates the causality among economic growth, renewable energy consumption, capital and labor for new EU member countries for the period of 1990-2009, by using asymmetric causality test approach and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The empirical results support that renewable energy consumption has positive impacts on economic growth for all investigated countries. But only for Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland, and Slovenia there is statistically significant impact on economic growth has found. And also supports neutrality hypothesis for Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia while the conservation hypothesis is present for Czech Republic. The fact that there is a causal relationship from economic growth to renewable energy consumption and the growth hypothesis is supported for Bulgaria, referring to causality from energy consumption to economic growth.