The Impact of Electricity Production from Renewable Sources, Nuclear Source and the Conversion of Land Use into Agricultural Land on CO2 Emissions

This paper attempts to introduce factors which are linked to the sources of CO2 emissions using a standard scale, technique and composition approach. In their early work, Grossman & Krueger (1991) suggest that the impact of economic factors such as growth and trade on the environment can be decomposed into scale, technique and composition effects. Later work of Antweiler et al. (1998) provides a well-completed theoretical guideline that allows researchers to estimate separately these 3 effects. However, studies of Cole & Elliott (2003) and Managi et al. (2009), while providing partial support for Antweiler et al., show that the relationship between economic factors and pollution vary by pollutant given the differences between many common pollutants, "particularly with regards to their sources" (Cole & Elliott (2003)). Thus, this study contributes to this literature and pay attention to variables which are linked to the sources of CO2 emissions. Since electricity production and the conversion of land use into agricultural land are two main single sources of carbon dioxide emissions, I examine these impact on per capita CO2 emissions. The results of estimation for a panel of 99 countries spanning the period 1971-2010 indicate that :(1) increasing the share in electricity production from nuclear and renewable sources can decrease CO2 emissions whereas (2) the conversion of land use into agriculture land raises the amount of carbon emitted.