Renewable energy consumption and robust globalization(s) in OECD countries: Do oil, carbon emissions and economic activity matter?

Using panel data that span the period 1970-2015, this study analyses the relationship between renewable energy consumption and the control variables: globalisation, per capita GDP, oil prices and per capita carbon emissions. A special focus is given to the effect of globalisation on renewable energy. The level of economic globalisation is measured by the “classic”, “reconstructed” and “revisited” globalisation indexes. The paper uses panel data techniques that confirm the presence of a long-run association between renewable energy consumption and the control variables. The empirical results show that there are positive effects for per capita income, the real price of oil and carbon emissions per capita on the renewable energy consumption. In addition, a higher level of globalisation (overall, economics, social and political) promotes renewable energy consumption, while the “reconstructed” and “revisited” economic globalisation reduces the use of renewable energy consumption, and this finding is also robust to different measures of economic globalisation. Moreover, the panel quantile regression reveals that renewable energy consumption increases the domestic economy in the middle (0.50) quantile group of the population through importing more advanced technology and positive spilling over markets, while the lower quantile group and higher quantile group of the population are using non-renewable (coal, wood) energy because of the livelihood practice that is based on coal and wood (lower quantiles group of the population) and for the sake of speedy growth (higher quantiles group of the population) that worsens the environmental quality without caring for the contents of globalisation.