Does renewable energy promote green economic growth in OECD countries?

Purpose - The development of green economy is of academic and policy importance to governments and policymakers worldwide. In the light of the necessity of renewable energy to sustain green economic growth, this study aims to examine the relationship between renewable energy consumption and green economic growth, controlling for the impact of trade openness for Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period 1990-2015, within a multivariate panel data framework. Design/methodology/approach - To investigate the long-run relationship between variables, panel cointegration tests are performed. Panel Granger causality based on vector error correction models is adopted to understand the short- and long-run dynamics of the data. Furthermore, ordinary least square (OLS), dynamic OLS and fully modified OLS methods are used to confirm the long-run elasticity of green growth for renewable energy consumption and trade openness. Moreover, system generalized method of moment is applied to eliminate serial correlation, heteroscedasticity and endogeneity problems. The authors used the panel Granger causality test developed by Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) to infer the directionality of the causal relationship, allowing for both the cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity. Findings - The results suggest that renewable energy consumption and trade openness exert positive effects on green economic growth. The results of long-run estimates of green economic growth reveal that the long-run elasticity of green economic growth for trade openness is much greater than for renewable energy consumption. The estimated results of the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) test reveal bidirectional causality between green economic growth and renewable energy consumption, providing support for the feedback hypothesis. Practical implications - This paper provides strong evidence of the contribution of renewable energy consumption on green economy for a wide range of countries. Despite the costs of establishing renewable energy facilities, it is evident that these facilities contribute to the green growth of an economy. Governments and public authorities should promote the consumption of renewable energy and should have a support policy to promote an active renewable energy market. Furthermore, the regulators must constitute an efficient regulatory framework to favor the renewable energy consumption. Social implications - Many countries focus on increasing their GDP without taking the environmental impacts of the growth process into account. This paper shows that renewable energy consumption points to the fact that countries can still increase their economic growth with minimal damage to environment. Despite the costs of adopting renewable energy technologies, there is still room for economic growth. Originality/value - This paper provides evidence on the contribution of renewable energy consumption on green economic growth for a wide range of countries. The paper focuses on the impact of renewable energy on economic growth by taking environmental degradation into consideration on a wide scale of countries.