• Energy Research

The objective of the study is to examine the relationship between macroeconomic factors (i.e., population growth; urbanization, industrialization, exchange rate, price level, food production index and live stock production index) and renewable energy in Pakistan over a period of 1975–2012. In addition, this study uses oil rent as an intervening variable to overcome the biasness of the single equation model. The results indicate that macroeconomic factors positively contributed to renewable energy consumption in Pakistan. The causality test indicate that there is a unidirectional causality running towards macroeconomic factors to renewable energy in Pakistan, however, renewable energy Granger cause oil rent but not via other route. In addition, there is bidirectional causality between exchange rate and live stock production in Pakistan. Variance decomposition analysis shows that economic growth has a major contribution to increase renewable energy in Pakistan.

Environmental quality indicators are crucial for responsive and cost-effective policies. The objective of the study is to examine the relationship between environmental quality indicators and financial development in Malaysia. For this purpose, the number of environmental quality indicators has been used, i.e., air pollution measured by carbon dioxide emissions, population density per square kilometer of land area, agricultural production measured by cereal production and livestock production, and energy resources considered by energy use and fossil fuel energy consumption, which placed an impact on the financial development of the country. The study used four main financial indicators, i.e., broad money supply (M2), domestic credit provided by the financial sector (DCFS), domestic credit to the private sector (DCPC), and inflation (CPI), which each financial indicator separately estimated with the environmental quality indicators, over a period of 1975-2013. The study used the generalized method of moments (GMM) technique to minimize the simultaneity from the model. The results show that carbon dioxide emissions exert the positive correlation with the M2, DCFC, and DCPC, while there is a negative correlation with the CPI. However, these results have been evaporated from the GMM estimates, where carbon emissions have no significant relationship with any of the four financial indicators in Malaysia. The GMM results show that population density has a negative relationship with the all four financial indicators; however, in case of M2, this relationship is insignificant to explain their result. Cereal production has a positive relationship with the DCPC, while there is a negative relationship with the CPI. Livestock production exerts the positive relationship with the all four financial indicators; however, this relationship with the CPI has a more elastic relationship, while the remaining relationship is less elastic with the three financial indicators in a country. Energy resources comprise energy use and fossil fuel energy consumption, both have distinct results with the financial indicators, as energy demand have a positive and significant relationship with the DCFC, DCPC, and CPI, while fossil fuel energy consumption have a negative relationship with these three financial indicators. The results of the study are of value to both environmentalists and policy makers.

SAARC members urgently need to secure sustainable energy supplies at affordable prices. Alarmingly high oil prices in the face of ever increasing energy demand have resulted in severe pressure on resources of SAARC members. The objective of this study examine the relationship among energy consumption, economic growth, relative prices of energy, FDI and different financial development indicators (i.e., broad money supply, liquid liabilities, domestic credit provided by banking sector and domestic credit to private sector) in the panel of selected SAARC countries namely Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka over a period of 1975–2011. Panel cointegration test suggest that the variables are cointegrated and have a long-run relationship between them. In addition, three different panel data methods i.e. pooled least square, fixed effects and random effects have been used to test the validity of the “energy-growth nexus via financial development” in the SAARC region. Specification tests (i.e., F-test and Hausman test) indicate that the fixed effect model considered as the best model to examine the relationship between energy and growth determinants, this implies that variables are apparently influenced by country effects only. The fixed effect model shows that there is a significant relationship among energy consumption, economic growth, FDI and financial development (FD) proxies, however, FD indicators has a larger impact on increasing energy demand, followed by GDP per capita and FDI. Therefore, it is concluded that there is a trade-off between the energy and growth variables in SAARC region, collective efforts is required to transform SAARC region from an energy-starved to an energy efficient region.