Umudike Journal of Engineering and Technology

The subject of connecting relationship between energy consumption and macro-economic variables linked with the quanta of continuous emissions provides a platform for informed decision making and is often performed using the theoretical environmental Kuznets. This study evaluates the relationship between economic growth, as reflected on the magnitude of the nation’s gross domestic products and the accompanying carbon dioxide emissions using the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. The trend of energy consumption pattern for the nation with respect to the energy carriers was utilised for the EKC evaluation and serves to present a holistic view of the emissions during the considered years. From the results obtained, a steady increase of emissions was observed from 29.09 million tCO₂ to 61.72 million tCO₂ as the years passed from 1980 to 2010, reflecting corresponding increase in the population, a factor that completely affect energy consumption; the pattern of consumption reflects the times, and the available mechanisms for energy conversion processes. Furthermore, from the model obtained with the available data on EKC, the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth is a monotonically increasing curve. However, in the absence of the informal economy, this empirical result do not support the EKC inverted U hypothesis for carbon dioxide emissions in Nigeria, based on no turning point since the second derivative of the EKC model, based on the coefficients is positive. Fewer years are reflective of higher energy efficiency with minimal contribution in energy consumption reduction from structural changes in GDP at sectoral level. However, overall contribution of aggregate activity effect to reduction in energy consumption is comparatively small resulting from limited number of distributed exports.  Factors such as changes in the composition of output, the introduction of cleaner production technology, environmental policies and environmental awareness play significant role in making the decoupling between economic growth and environmental degradation, and will help establish the nexus needed for EKC in Nigeria.