This paper aims at (1) assessing the variations in the trends of CO2 emissions and electricity consumption across countries worldwide and the changes over time, (2) investigating the changes over time in the impact of electricity consumption on CO2 emissions worldwide with a particular focus on the countries in the MENA region, and (3) evaluating the differences in the trends of CO2 emissions across the different income groups of countries. To achieve these aims, this paper employs functional data methods for the analysis of CO2 emissions trends. Functional data analysis has grown into a comprehensive and useful field of statistics which provides a convenient framework to describe, model and analyse time series data for different individuals. Up to our knowledge, functional data analysis has not been employed before to study the patterns and relationships of CO2 emissions across the globe. All studies that evaluated the impacts of energy consumption and economic growth on CO2 emissions are different than this paper due to using either different data, time periods, model formulation or methodology. The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2 describes the data available for the study. Section 3 motivates and explains the functional data methods used in the analysis of the CO2 emissions and the electricity consumption data described in Section 2. This is followed by a discussion of the results in Section 4. Finally, in Section 5, the paper concludes with the main findings and policy implications of the study.
Authors
Amira Elayouty
Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Faculty of...
Research Fellows
Hala Abou-Ali
Professor of Economics and Chair of the...