ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN ETHIOPIA TIME SERIES ANALYSIS

Abstract

We have limited studies on the relationship between energy efficiency and economic growth in the context of sub Saharan Africa where efficient energy supply is limited although energy is vital to meet sustainable development goals. Considering this, this study investigates the long run relationship between energy efficiency and the economic growth in Ethiopia for the period 1974/75 to 2017/18. Multivariate time series analysis was employed. The result indicated that the existence of unidirectional causality running from economic growth to energy efficiency. Similarly, for the sectoral share of GDP, the unidirectional causality runs from energy efficiency to industry share while as bidirectional causality runs from service shares to energy efficiency and vice versa. The speed of adjustment coefficient indicates that the previous period disequilibrium adjusts to equilibrium at the rate of 59.2% annually. Impulse response function specifies responsiveness of the energy efficiency in the model to the shocks in the error term indicated that economic growth has significant influence while variance decomposition measured the strength of causality relationship showed high causal effect to energy efficiency. The overall result showed that increased economic growth has a strong cause of energy efficiency in Ethiopia. The government needs to give more importance to sustain economic growth so that both the wellbeing and the energy efficiency of the nation are improved.