The relationship between economic growth, energy consumption and CO2 emissions: An assessment on MIST countries

Economic growth, with its general definition, is the realization of the increase in real GDP per capita. The first goal for countries is to achieve economic growth. In addition, it is important that economic growth takes place in a sustainable manner. For economic growth, especially after the industrial revolution, the consumption of energy resources has increased. However, the consumption of energy resources has caused various environmental problems. From another point of view, the population in cities is gradually increasing and accordingly, there is an increase in the use of energy resources to meet the needs of people living in cities. The most important environmental problem that arises is the greenhouse gas emission to the air, and greenhouse gas emission is generally expressed as CO2 emission. Countries increase their energy consumption in order to realize their economic growth, and in this context, it is seen that there is an increase in CO2 emissions in countries. The Kyoto Protocol was signed by the United Nations in 1997 to prevent greenhouse gas emissions. In this context, the link between economic growth, energy consumption and CO2 emissions for the MIST country group is discussed with the annual data for the 1971-2014 period. In addition, urbanization data was included in the study as a control variable. In the study, Durbin-Hausman cointegration test (2008) and LM (2007) cointegration test were applied to investigate the cointegration relationship. In the study, a cointegration relationship was found between the variables of economic growth, energy consumption, CO2 emissions and urbanization, and then the coefficients were estimated with the OLS-CD coefficient estimation method. As a result of the coefficient estimation, it was concluded that the electricity consumption used for energy consumption reduced CO2 emissions, while urbanization and economic growth increased CO2 emissions.