Empirical study of the Environmental Kuznets curve and Environmental Sustainability curve hypothesis for Australia, China, Ghana and USA

By S. Sarkodie, V. Strezov. Journal of Cleaner Production, 2018

410 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This study examines Environmental Kuznets and Environmental Sustainability curve hypotheses for Australia, China, Ghana and the USA from 1971 to 2013 in order to examine the factors contributing to adverse greenhouse gas emission and economic impacts relative to their development. The study revealed that the decline of carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries can be attributed to a paradigm shift and structural change from high-energy intensive and carbon-intensive industries to services and information-intensive industries. The increasing levels of carbon dioxide emissions in developing and least developing countries can be attributed to the economy driven by agriculture, transport and services. Environmental policies and regulations in developing and least developing countries are weaker compared to developed countries, as such, they become a haven for high-energy and carbon-intensive industries. The high awareness of environmental sustainability, technological advancement, stringent environmental regulations and policies in developed countries result in a decline in energy intensity and a decline in carbon dioxide emissions. The Environmental Sustainability Curve hypothesis shows that the affecting factors include economic growth, energy consumption patterns and carbon dioxide emissions. The study reveals electric power consumption as the main contributor of energy intensity in the selected countries. Decoupling economic growth from electric power consumption and improving energy efficiency in China, Ghana, Australia, and the USA will enhance energy security and decline the economic related dynamics and activities on the environment.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/487161612eab0346cdb24a4a9870e74533321850

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Citations in the corpus

Industrial growth and emissions of CO2 in Ghana: The role of financial development and fossil fuel consumption (2019, background): “The present study is different from the study by Sarkodie and Strezov (2019) in its use of empirical data to test the EKC hypothesis rather than undertaking a review of past studies. In another related study, Asumadu-Sarkodie and Owusu (2016) employs the VECM and the ARDL models to analyze the empir”
Carbon emissions and the trilemma of trade policy, migration policy and health care in the US (2019, methodology): “[36] and Sarkodie and Strezov [21], and the immigration–CO2 dynamics in Earl, Hickey and Rieder [6].”
Dynamic impact of trade policy, economic growth, fertility rate, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption on ecological footprint in Europe. (2019, background): “…al., 2019a), more attention has been given to the environmental responses from the population dynamics, energy usage, economic growth, and several other notable factors (Akadiri et al., 2019, Alola and Alola, 2018; Emir and Bekun, 2018; Sarkodie, 2018; Shahbaz and Sinha, 2019; Wang and Dong, 2019).”