Analysing the Relationship Between Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Renewable Energy Utilization, and Economic Growth in Kenya

Abstract

This study analyzes the relationship between Carbon Dioxide emissions, renewable energy utilization, and economic growth in Kenya for the period 1971 -2015 using the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model. The main objective of the study was to assess the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions, renewable energy utilization, and economic growth. There exists a positive association between carbon emissions and per capita GDP in Kenya which is significant. Renewable energy has a positive while urbanization has a negative but insignificant relationship with carbon emissions in the LR. The government can subsidize the energy sector to encourage the use of clean energy. Funding by both international and domestic donors towards green technology should be encouraged with such funding well accounted for. It can increase sensitization of people towards the green economy as the people lack adequate information on green technologies which would help in promoting a low carbon economy. The citizens would also be informed more on goods and services produced from green technologies as this would ensure that technology transfer is high promotion its adoption and adaptation. The government, therefore, can fund research and development on green technology as this would provide more information on the cost- benefit analysis of adopting the green technology in production process.