Energy Consumption, Income, Trading Openness, and Environmental Pollution: Testing Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of energy consumption, economic growth, and trade openness on environmental pollution in a developing country, especially in the case of Vietnam. The study was conducted on the basis of time-series data collected in the period of time between the years 1990 and 2014. By a method of autoregressive distributed lag and testing the hypothesis of the environmental Kuznets curve, our result demonstrated that environmental Kuznets curve could be found in both the long run and short run. There existed an inverted U-shaped relationship between different pollutants and per capita income. Further, energy consumption could positively affect carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the short run, but negatively could affect CO2 emissions in the long run because of transformation from non-renewable energy sources to renewable energy sources. In addition, environmental pollution converged on its long-run equilibrium by at least 29.4% with the speed adjustment via the channel of income, energy consumption, and trade openness. In terms of trade openness, the country has a positive and significant effect on CO2 emissions in both the long run and short run.