Does energy substitution affect carbon dioxide emissions - Income relationship?

Tsurumi, Tetsuya, and Managi, Shunsuke-Does energy substitution affect carbon dioxide emissions - Income relationship? Considerable discussion has taken place during the last decade regarding the role of economic growth in determining environmental quality. Using data from 30 OECD countries for the period 1960-2003 and the nonparametric method of generalized additive models, which enables us to use flexible functional forms, this paper examines the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for carbon dioxide (CO(2)). We find that the reduction of coal share in energy use has a significant effect on CO(2). Our results imply that economic growth is not sufficient to decrease CO(2) emissions. J. Japanese Int. Economies 24 (4) (2010) 540-551. Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University, 6-6-20 Aramaki-Aza Aoba, Aoba-Ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan: Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, 2108-11 Kamiyamaguchi, Hayama, Kanagawa 240-0115, Japan. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.