Population growth, electricity demand and environmental sustainability in Nigeria: insights from a vector auto-regressive approach

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationships between population growth, energy needs, and environmental sustainability in Africa. To do so, we take Nigeria as an illustrative case and set-up a multivariate framework incorporating total population, electricity demand, per capita income and the amount of CO₂ yearly emitted by the power and heating sector over the largest period: 1971–2018. Results confirm the existence of a one-way causality from population to electricity consumption, per capita income, and CO₂ emissions without feedback. Besides, a unidirectional link running from electricity consumption to economic growth is depicted, congruent with the electricity-led growth hypothesis. Finally, electricity consumption is found to be a substantial environmental pollution-enabler in Nigeria. The provision of affordable electricity should be balanced by a trend from fossil-fuel supply to sustainable energy resources.

KEYWORDS:

• Population
• electricity demand
• sustainability
• VAR model

Acknowledgments

Comments from the editor Dr Michael Brett-Crowther and the anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Asia and Africa are expected to record 90% of the global urbanisation growth in the future. China, India and Nigeria are expected to cover 37% of the world’s urban population by 2050 [9].

2. By contrast, it reached 4,500 kWh in South Africa for the same year [8].

3. The Nigerian power sector represented 40% of the national CO₂ emissions in 2016 [143].

4. Namely, the Lagrange Multiplier test for autocorrelation in the residuals, the tests for normally distributed disturbances; the eigenvalue stability condition, and the associated roots of the companion matrix.