The energy mix-environmental aspects of income and economic freedom in Hong Kong: cointegration and frequency domain causality evidence

Since the inception of the quantification or qualification of global economic freedom, there has been increasing drive and competition towards for better financial freedom among the global economies. However, balancing the drive towards environmental sustainability and economic freedom, especially from the context of the Global Goals, has remained relatively ignored. Thus, this study tries to reveal the nature of the relationship, that is, a U- or inverted U-shaped hypothesis between economic freedom and environmental degradation in the case of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR). As the result of the investigation implied, economic freedom and environmental degradation exhibit a U-shaped relationship against the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve in the relationship between environmental degradation and income. The implication is that economic freedom poses more danger to the environment than income growth, especially when both experiences exponential increase. In any case, Hong Kong’s two principal energy sources (coal and oil) constitute a significant source of environmental damage. Moreover, there is Granger-causality evidence with frequency inference in favour of causality between carbon emission and all the explanatory variables except for the fossil oil consumption.