Incidence of Energy Consumption, Mining Sector and Economic Growth on CO2 Emission Levels: Evidence from Peru

Environmental pollution and its harmful effects have become a growing topic of study in recent years because the exploitation of resources, rationalized by the prevailing desire for economic growth, is going to directly affect the sustainability of our existing ecosystem in the coming decades. This is considering that there are productive sectors that have a larger environmental footprint, such as the mining industry. This study focuses on establishing the relationship between the variables of energy consumption, GDP per capita, and mineral rents and their impact on the level of pollution by CO2 emissions in the period 1971–2019, using the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory. To this end, we used statistical and econometric tools based on the ARDL dynamic model through a time series analysis starting from historical data. We concluded that the variables CEpc, PBIpc, and RM have deleterious effects as a 1% increase in these variables increases the level of environmental pollution by CO2 emissions by 0.724%, 0.136%, and 0.061%, respectively.