Investigating the interdependence between non-hydroelectric renewable energy, agricultural value added, and arable land use in Argentina

We examine the dynamic relationships between per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, real gross domestic product (GDP), non-hydroelectric renewable energy (NHRE) consumption, agricultural value added (AVA), and agricultural land (AGRL) use for the case of Argentina over the period 1980-2013 by employing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds approach to cointegration and Granger causality tests. The Wald test confirms the existence of a long-run cointegration between variables. There are long-run bidirectional causalities between all considered variables. The short-run Granger causality suggests bidirectional causality between AVA and agricultural land use; unidirectional causalities running from AGRL to NHRE and from NHRE to AVA. Long-run elasticity estimates suggest that increasing AVA increases GDP and reduces both pollution and NHRE; increasing NHRE reduces AVA and AGRL. Thus it seems that agriculture and renewable energy are substitute activities and compete for land use. We recommend that Argentina should continue to encourage agricultural production. The substitutability between agricultural and non-hydroelectric renewable energy productions, and their competition for agricultural land use, should be at least reduced or even stopped by encouraging R&D in second-generation (or even in third-generation) biofuels production and in new renewable energy technologies more efficient in land use