Assessing the Relationships between Economic Output and Energy Consumption, Energy Efficiency, and Renewable Energy Consumption for Twelve Southeast Asia and Oceania Nations

Energy is an essential input for creating economic output. Increasing energy access, diversifying energy portfolios, and becoming more energy efficient are all believed to be requirements for fostering economic growth worldwide. This research analyzes at the macroeconomic level the correlations and the direction of implied causalities which exist between economic output and energy consumption, energy efficiency, and renewable energy consumption. These relationships are analyzed with considerations for energy access rates and attention devoted to political conditions, a key differentiator in the literature on energy economics. Analysis is conducted using a multivariate panel data set comprised of statistics for twelve ASEAN Plus Six nations located in Southeast Asia and Oceania and dynamic panel models. Findings indicate implied short-term bidirectional causalities exist between total final energy consumption and economic output, supporting the feedback hypothesis, while short-term neutrality relationships were discovered to be implied between economic output and energy efficiency and the renewable energy share of total final primary energy consumption. In addition, considerations for political conditions and energy access were found insignificant in all dynamic models run