This article evaluates the impact of renewable energy consumption levels on GDP growth. Renewable energy sources may be significantly more costly as compared to classical (fossil) sources. Hence, high relative proportion of renewable energy has the potential of obstructing economic growth. On the other hand, in developed countries, renewable energy adoption processes are often subject to prominent state‐level incentives, administrative ingerence, and fiscal subsidies. For stratified and unbiased evaluation of the overall effect of renewables on GDP, this article applies a spatio‐temporal analysis of GDP growth at the regional NUTS2 level in a conveniently selected group of 11 spatially adjacent yet heterogeneous EU member states. As macroeconomic covariates are controlled for, along with spatial and temporal interdependencies, there is no sign of negative impact of renewable energy consumption on GDP growth. While the estimated overall effect is positive and statistically significant, its economic significance is small. Yet, given the data and economies considered, we may conclude that renewable energy consumption does not exert negative influence on economic growth rates.

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关于可再生能源消费水平的区域GDP增长的半参数时空分析

本文评估了可再生能源消费水平对GDP增长的影响。与传统（化石）能源相比，可再生能源的成本可能高得多。因此，高比例的可再生能源有可能阻碍经济增长。另一方面，在发达国家，可再生能源的采用过程通常要受到国家级的重要激励措施，行政责任感和财政补贴。为了对可再生能源对GDP的总体影响进行分层且无偏见的评估，本文对11个空间相邻但异质的欧盟成员国进行了选择，对区域NUTS2级别的GDP增长进行了时空分析。由于对宏观经济协变量以及时空相互依存关系进行了控制，没有迹象表明可再生能源消费对GDP增长有负面影响。虽然估计的总体效果是积极的，并且具有统计意义，但其经济意义很小。但是，考虑到数据和经济性，我们可以得出结论，可再生能源消费不会对经济增长率产生负面影响。