The asymmetric effect of eco-innovation on the energy consumption structure: the US as a case study

Abstract

PurposeOne of the most important ways to pay attention to sustainable economic development is to invest in green technology and alter the energy consumption structure (ECS) in countries. Changing the ECS can be important in two ways: first, it increases the diversity of energy consumption and reduces energy dependence on other countries. Second, the use of highly polluted nonrenewable energy sources (such as oil and coal) is reduced, leading to the transfer of energy to natural gas with less carbon emissions or renewable energy. To this end, the authors examined the asymmetric effects of eco-innovation on the US ECS from 1980 to 2019. This paper aims to address this issue.Design/methodology/approachIn this research, the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) (NARDL) model is used and the results are compared with the linear ARDL model.FindingsThe ARDL results also confirm the positive effects of oil prices and GDP per capita in the long run. On the other hand, short-term and long-term Wald test results confirm the nonlinear effects of eco-innovation (LPATENT) on US ECS. These results indicate that 1% positive shock in LPATENTˆ+ increases the ECS by 0.179, while 1% negative fluctuations (LPATENTˆ-) leads to a decrease (−0.085) in the ECS. However, the ARDL results, in general, show the positive effects of LPATENT on the ECS in long run. Evidence suggests that ignoring nonlinear effects can lead to inaccurate results. Policy suggestions for environmental technology innovation are presented in the results.Originality/valueThis research has innovations in various aspects so that the previous studies in this field have examined the effects of environmental innovation on renewable or nonrenewable energy consumption, and so far no study has been done on the ECS. In this research, the Shannon–Wiener index has been used to calculate the ECS.