By Umar Farooq, Assistant Professor of Economics and International Business at Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), Greater Noida

The role of energy in economic development is well-documented in the empirical literature (Dogan et al., 2020; Amin et al., 2020; Joseph and Charles, 2021). No country can envision the prosperity and upliftment of its people without enough access to prospective energy sources. An adequate supply of energy is critical for promoting economic growth, improving health and education, and establishing a more competitive job market (Ouedraogo 2013; Wang et al., 2018). A substantial body of literature has been devoted to studying the drivers of energy consumption (Rafindadi and Ozturk, 2017; Shastri et al., 2020). Among the key variables used to estimate energy demand are financial development (Anton & Afloarei Nucu, 2020; Yi et al., 2023), geopolitical uncertainty (Cai & Wu, 2021), per capita GDP (Bui Minh & Bui Van, 2023), and trade openness (Murshed, 2020). Various reasons have been proposed to establish the theoretical linkage between energy consumption and these variables.