ASSESSING THE LOW-CARBON ECONOMY TRANSITION IN MOROCCO: THE ROLE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY, TRADE, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

This study investigates the determinants of Morocco’s transition toward a low-carbon economy. Carbon Productivity, defined as the ratio of GDP to CO₂ emissions, is used as a proxy for the low-carbon economy transition. By using annual data from 1990 to 2021 and applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique, this study analyzes the long- and short-run effects of renewable energy consumption, trade openness, and economic growth on carbon productivity. The results show that both renewable energy consumption and trade openness significantly enhance carbon productivity in the long run, while GDP growth exhibits a delayed short-run negative effect. In order to confirm the model’s robustness, diagnostic tests such as Jarque–Bera test, Breusch–Godfrey LM test and the Breusch–Pagan–Godfrey are employed. Their outcomes confirm the absence of autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity. The cumulative sum of squares test further validates the model’s stability over time. The findings of this study contribute to the existing literature on carbon productivity and highlight the importance of renewable energy consumption and trade openness as key drivers of Morocco’s low-carbon economy transition in the long run, while emphasizing that economic growth alone is insufficient to enhance carbon productivity without supportive sustainability policies.