Page 16 - GHES-3-1

Global Health Economics and
Sustainability
Energy consumption and life expectancy in West Africa

for medical services. These results corroborate those of significant relationship with life expectancy (LEXP).
Aderinto (2023) and Agbanike et al. (2019). They also Although NREC negatively affects LEXP, the non-
confirm the findings of Qiang et al. (2023), who used the significance of the coefficient in the short run, shown
same estimation method to find that renewable energy has in Panel B of Table 3, indicates that this effect does not
a positive and significant effect on life expectancy in 121 manifest itself immediately. The long-run coefficient of
countries. In contrast, Noor & Cameron (2014) showed that NREC is significant, suggesting that its effects manifest
wind turbines cause noise pollution and wildlife fatalities themselves fully in the long run. This explains why the
through collisions and take up a lot of space. Furthermore, negative effect of non-renewable energy is not taken
Dunlap (2021, p. 91) observed that wind energy, acclaimed seriously and the sluggishness in embracing renewable
to be clean energy, “involves socially and ecologically energy. This finding is in line with that of Nkalu and Edeme
destructive mining processes that produce large amounts (2019), who showed that life expectancy decreases due to
of mining tailings (or waste) containing heavy metals, the environmental effects of fossil fuels. Therefore, non-
thorium and radioactive materials that go into the air, renewable energy consumption (NREC) is detrimental to
water, soil, animals, and people’s bodies.” This implies longevity. The findings of Asgher et al. (2019) support this
that there are drawbacks of renewable energy use, which view in that non-renewable energy reduces environmental
must be guarded against. Even the recommendation of quality while increasing the mortality rate.
Weitensfelder et al. (2024), who called for energy efficiency
and renewability as mitigating measures following a higher Indeed, increasing income (GDPpc) enhances life
energy demand for economic growth, should be used with expectancy (LEXP). A higher GDP per capita enables
caution. governments to invest more in healthcare infrastructure,
The results also revealed that the consumption of facilities, and medical technologies. This leads to improved
non-renewable energy (NREC) has a negative but non- access to quality healthcare services for citizens, thereby
improving healthcare outcomes and life expectancy. The
coefficient of GDP was positive and non-significant in
Table 2. ARDL cointegration test results PC
the short run. Although this conforms with our a priori
Variable Coefficient Std. error t‑statistic Prob. economic expectation, it is rather surprising that this
COINTE01 −0.310638 0.009827 −3.082517 0.0043 coefficient was not statistically significant. This is mainly
Source: Authors’ computation, 2024 using Eviews 9. because while the population of West African countries
Abbreviation: ARDL: Autoregressive distributed lag. grows geometrically, their ability to produce output/

Table 3. ARDL long‑ and short‑run results, dependent variable: LEXP
Variable Coefficient Std. error t‑statistic p‑value
Panel A: Long-run coefficients
REC 0.624657 0.087810 7.113754 0.00002
NREC −0.580912 0.083661 −6.943649 0.00003
GDP PC 0.006412 0.000561 11.43314 0.00006
HEXP 6.600008 0.596038 11.07313 0.00002
CPI −28.86016 2.135960 −13.51156 0.00001
FP 0.002898 0.010621 −0.272894 0.78610
Panel B: Short-run coefficients
D (REC[−2]) 0.147074 0.074008 1.987288 0.05250
D (NREC[−1]) −0.091490 0.060392 −1.514943 0.13620
D (GDP [−1]) 0.000230 0.000275 0.837404 0.40640
PC
D (HEXP) 0.032988 0.072610 0.454322 0.65160
D (CPI[−2]) −0.199786 0.097450 2.050131 0.04570
D (FP[−2]) 0.014632 0.005544 2.639065 0.01110
2
ECT = −0.310638 R =0.67833 Ad-R =0.55495 DW=1.932502
2
Note: ECT: Error correction term; DW: Durbin-Watson; R2: R squared; Ad R2: Adjusted R2. Source: Authors’ computation, 2024 using Eviews 9.
Abbreviations: ARDL: Autoregressive distributed lag; GDP: Gross domestic product.

Volume 3 Issue 1 (2025) 8 https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.3518