Carbon Emissions of electricity generation and air transport in middle east countries: a maximum entropy approach

Abstract

The rapid economic growth since the industrial revolution has led to higher energy demand and exploitation of natural energy resources in the world. This extensive use of fossil fuel energy causes higher carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which is the most harmful greenhouse gas emissions and currently one of the most challenging problems of modern societies. Given the increasing attention to the balance among environmental, societal, and economic considerations, sustainable development has been introduced in order to reach higher economic growth, more conservation of natural resources, higher energy security and environment quality protection at the same time. For this purpose, economic growth must be accompanied by socio-economic and environmental goals. In this regard, electricity generation and transportation sectors are the major drivers of carbon dioxide emissions in the world. The main goal of this thesis is to analyze the environmental impact, namely CO2 emissions, of electricity generation and air transport in a sample of oil-producing countries in the Middle East. Since these sample countries benefit from a large share of the world's oil, natural gas, and coal reserves, the electricity generation and transportation sectors are highly dependent on fossil fuels. Accordingly, it is worth studying to find out the relationship between economic growth, carbon emissions from electricity generation and air transport. To this end, the maximum entropy bootstrap for time series and generalized maximum entropy estimation are applied in this work. Understanding the existence and direction of the nexus between economic and environmental variables is required to set efficient electricity conservation policies and to achieve sustainable economic growth while preserving environmental quality.