Department of Economics, Federal University Lokoja, P.M.B 1154, Lokoja, Kogi, Nigeria.
Department of Economics and Finance, Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Science, Istanbul Gelisim University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2020 May;27(15):17706-17716. doi: 10.1007/s11356-020-08146-z. Epub 2020 Mar 10.
As much as energy supply remains a major challenge in most of the African countries, the compounding environmental effect of energy consumption has continued to be a serious concern to policymakers and environmental stakeholders. On this note, this study seeks to investigate the coal-led growth hypothesis for South Africa by incorporating employment as a control variable for the first time. The incorporation of the employment in investigating the coal-led growth hypothesis especially for the case of South Africa is novel given that the World Coal Association (2016) reported that the country is the sixth largest exporter and seventh largest producer of coal globally. The study implemented an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound testing to cointegration for the data spanning from 1970 to 2017. As such, the empirical result revealed that coal usage is the highest emitter of carbon, suggesting that a 1% increase in coal consumption account for about 68% emission in the short run, and 56% in the long run, respectively. On the other hand, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow discourages carbon emission in the short-run and long run so that a 1% increase in FDI inflow causes a reduction in CO2 by about 0.003% and 001%. The novelty of this study is proven in the estimation of the interaction between employment and coal consumption. However, employment induced by economic growth and coal consumption both have significant tendencies of inflicting adverse environmental impacts in the short-run and long run. Thus, this study put forward relevant policy and for onward recommendation for the government to woo new foreign investors and to switch to renewable energy as an alternative sources as a possible approach of energy efficiency and environmental sustainability with a view to achieving sustainable development goals.
尽管能源供应仍然是大多数非洲国家面临的主要挑战，但能源消耗对环境造成的复合影响继续引起政策制定者和环境利益相关者的严重关注。有鉴于此，本研究首次纳入就业作为控制变量，旨在探讨南非的煤炭主导增长假说。考虑到世界煤炭协会（2016 年）报告称该国是全球第六大煤炭出口国和第七大煤炭生产国，将就业纳入对南非煤炭主导增长假说的研究是新颖的。该研究采用自回归分布滞后（ARDL）协整检验来检验 1970 年至 2017 年期间的数据。实证结果表明，煤炭使用是碳的最大排放源，这意味着煤炭消费增加 1%，短期内将导致排放量增加约 68%，长期内增加 56%。另一方面，外国直接投资（FDI）流入在短期内和长期内抑制碳排放，因此 FDI 流入增加 1%将导致 CO2 减少约 0.003%和 001%。本研究的新颖之处在于对就业和煤炭消费之间相互作用的估计。然而，经济增长和煤炭消费所带来的就业都有在短期内和长期内对环境造成不利影响的显著趋势。因此，本研究提出了相关政策建议，供政府吸引新的外国投资者，并转向可再生能源作为一种替代能源，以实现可持续发展目标，提高能源效率和环境可持续性。
