Renewable energy, arable land, agriculture, CO2 emissions, and economic growth in Morocco

The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds approach to cointegration and Granger causality tests are used to investigate the dynamic short and long-run causality relationships between per capita renewable energy (RE) consumption, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, real gross domestic product (GDP), agricultural value added (AVA), and arable land use (LUSE) for the case of Morocco during the period 1980-2013. Two models are used: the first with the AVA variable, and the second with the LUSE variable. The Wald test confirms the existence of a long-run relationship between variables for each considered model. Our long-run estimates indicate that an increase in economic growth, agricultural production, and arable land use contribute to increase the use of renewable energy, while a decrease in CO2 emissions increases renewable energy consumption. Granger causality tests reveal the existence of a short-run unidirectional causality running from AVA and from LUSE to RE consumption; a long-run unidirectional causality running from LUSE to RE, and a long-run bidirectional causality between AVA and RE. We recommend that Morocco should continue to encourage renewable energy use because this latter is not in competition with agricultural production for land use, but rather it is a complementary activity