Economic Complexity, Renewable and Non-renewable Energy Consumption A Comparative Study of Developed and Developing Countries

Economic complexity is an index that has been raised in the last decade and indicates the use of technology in the process of producing goods and services of a country, which leads to increased economic growth and prosperity by creating a productive structure in the composition, increased productivity and diversity of manufactured products. Economic complexity is expected to affect energy consumption because the type of products produced is an important determinant of energy consumption. If countries operate in energy-intensive industries such as metals, chemicals, and forest products, energy consumption will be high, and if they specialize in low energy and highly complex products, energy consumption in these countries will decrease. In addition, the level of technological knowledge of countries can significantly affect energy efficiency. Therefore, in this research, the effects of economic complexity and economic growth on renewable, non-renewable and total energy consumption in developing and developed countries in the period of 2000-2020 have been investigated by GMM method.

GMM estimator is a subset of instrumental variable method estimators. In this method, in addition to solving the problem of correlation of the independent variable with disturbance components, the endogeneity of the variables and the heterogeneity of the variance of the model are also solved. It should be noted that this method is applicable when T is smaller than N (number of segments).

The results of this research show that the economic complexity index affects the development of renewable energy in developing and developed countries and also causes a decrease in the use of non-renewable energy and total energy consumption in developed countries and an increase in the use of non-renewable and total energy consumption in developing countries. It is currently being developed. In this research, the opening of trade has had a positive effect on the consumption of renewable energy in both groups of countries, and in developed countries, the opening of trade has reduced the consumption of non-renewable and total energy, and in developing countries, the opposite result has been obtained. In both groups of countries, energy consumption has a positive relationship with income level. Also, the results show that if economic growth is accompanied with higher technology, it can lead to a lower increase in total energy consumption in both groups of countries.

As mentioned in the introduction, economic complexity represents a complex and knowledge-based production structure of a given country that takes a long time to mature. When economic complexity increases, the use of non-renewable energy and environmental degradation increases first in a given country. However, with the increase of environmental preferences in a society, the economic actors change their energy by using non-renewable energy habits. This is completely consistent with the results of the estimation models as explained above. Based on the obtained results, it can be said that economic complexity is a policy factor for the overall transformation of renewable energy and demand for greener energy. The study recommends that complexity and structural change policies should be implemented for cleaner and greener growth and overall promotion of greener energy in developing and developed countries. Due to the movement of developing countries towards the development of technology, the need for energy will increase in the coming years. Hence, there is a need for policymakers to plan to meet energy needs. Considering the existing limitations in the use of fossil energy, which leads to complications such as environmental pollution and resource depletion, necessary investments should be made for the development of clean and renewable energy. In order to reduce energy consumption, policies that increase energy efficiency or prevent any form of  waste should be formulated, especially in economic sectors. In this regard, Can and Guzgur recommend that the level of fossil energy consumption in each industry should be clearly estimated and based on that, governments should establish specific laws for each industry. Through developing policies related to trade facilitation, they should also reduce the cost of importing new technologies, or decrease the cost of discovering new technologies via financing research and development institutions. Governments should promote energy regulations to reduce fossil fuel dependence and energy intensity. Future studies could examine the impact of economic complexity on energy demand in terms of oil-importing versus oil-exporting economies. Examining the effects of economic complexity on different aspects of energy (e.g., electric and nuclear energy) can be an important research question for researchers working on energy strategy.