Effects of Energy Consumption on GDP: New Evidence of 24 Countries on Their Natural Resources and Production of Electricity

Abstract Because of rapid economic expansion, China, the USA, and India have become the largest energy producers and sources of CO2 emissions in the world. They burned over 45% of global fuels in 2016. Meanwhile, the developing strategies of 24 polluted states to decrease fossil energy consumption without additional economic output. This paper explores the effect of world top polluted countries’ CO2 emission, their GDP and production of electricity by potential indicators and identifies the basic factors that contribute to changes in an environment where petroleum, natural gas, coal, nuclear, biomass, and other renewable energy and hydroelectric sources are examined with GDP per capita. We estimate our data for the period from 1968 to 2017 and use the GLM model. The results show that more production of electricity is causing abnormal CO2 emissions. The Granger causality test shows that there is a unidirectional relationship between energy consumption and economic advancement. Also, there is a short-run bidirectional causality that exists among the energy indicators. We find a unilateral causality between energy consumption and economic growth. Therefore, the consumption of energy might be conductive of 24 (polluted) countries and better economic development; the consumption of energy may be failsafe and guaranteed, while we should limit the resources of countries.