Renewable energy consumption, CO2 emissions and oil prices in the G7 countries

Economic and societal issues related to energy security and global warming is placing greater emphasis on the consumption of renewable energy. This paper presents and estimates an empirical model of renewable energy consumption for the G7 countries. Panel cointegration estimates show that in the long term, increases in real GDP per capita and CO2 per capita are found to be major drivers behind per capita renewable energy consumption. These results are robust across two different panel cointegration estimators. Oil price increases have a smaller although negative impact on renewable energy consumption. Deviations from equilibrium are driven mostly by the error correction term as opposed to short term shocks. Short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take anywhere from between 1.3 years (France) and 7.3 years (Japan) to correct. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.