The Impact of Disaggregated Energy Consumption on Economic Growth: Evidence from EaP and CIS Countries

Since energy sector plays a tremendous role in all areas of productive economic activities in 12 Eastern Partner and CIS countries, irrespective of their natural resource endowment levels, this thesis aims to analyse the impact of renewable and non-renewable final energy consumption on economic growth within 1996-2015, while also considering the gross capital formation and foreign direct investments as a major source of financing energy extractive and transportation activities. The results of panel ARDL model suggests that in the long-run only renewable energy consumption has a significantly positive effect on economic growth, indicating that energy transformation does not necessarily have to be associated with compromise in economic growth. In the short run, the scope of impact on economic growth is larger for non-renewable energy consumption, however both exert a significant and positive effect. Country-specific short-run coefficients are proven to be quite heterogenous. The results of panel ARDL are endorsed by robustness analysis of sub-sample without Russian Federation and by analysing net energy exporters against net energy importers. Finally, studying the impact of share of renewable energy consumption in TFEC on economic growth, indicates that increasing the share of renewables in energy mix has significantly positive influence on economic growth in EaP and CIS countries.