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What drives energy intensity in Ghana? A test of the Environmental Kuznets hypothesis
Author(s) -
Aboagye Solomon
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
opec energy review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1753-0237
pISSN - 1753-0229
DOI - 10.1111/opec.12155
Subject(s) - kuznets curve , energy intensity , energy consumption , economics , context (archaeology) , natural resource economics , consumption (sociology) , energy security , sustainable development , natural resource , sustainability , development economics , economic growth , renewable energy , ecology , geography , social science , sociology , archaeology , biology
Energy consumption reduction and energy efficiency improvement are recognised as global priorities in the context of the green economy and sustainable development. The energy consumption is a major source of pollution in developing countries like Ghana comes from wood, crop residues, straw and dung, which is often burned in poorly designed stoves within ill‐ventilated huts. In addition, energy consumption is closely linked to the depletion of natural resources such as the forest. Hence, against a milieu of concerns about climate change, peak oil, and energy security issues, reducing energy intensity has gained much popularity in contemporary growth agenda and it is often advocated as a way to at least partially mitigate these impacts. Thus, reducing energy intensity has assumed a central theme in contemporary growth and development agenda of Ghana. Within the modified Environment Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, the study attempts to unravel the major drivers of energy intensity in Ghana using the recent Autoregresive Distributed Lagged dynamic model estimator. There was sufficient long‐run evidence in support of the EKC hypothesis although, low and initial levels of income could be associated with some rise in energy intensity.