Renewable Energy Consumption-Economic Growth Nexus in G7 Countries: New Evidence from a Nonlinear ARDL Approach

The paper investigates the nonlinear pass-through from economic growth to renewable energy consumptionby applying a Nonlinear Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag model (NARDL) for G7 countries. This study covers the period of 1995Q1-2015Q4. The recent approach allows for empirical tests of short-run and long-run asymmetric responses of renewable energy consumption to positive and negative shocks stemming from economic growth. The results reveal that renewable energy consumption responds asymmetrically to economic growth in the long-run for France, Japan, Italy and the UK. However, we find no evidence for a long-run equilibrium between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in Germany, Canada and the US.