Links between the Energy Intensity of Public Urban Transport, Regional Economic Growth and Urbanisation: The Case of Poland

Abstract

The article concerns the verification of links between the energy intensity of public urban transport, regional economic development and urbanisation in the light of sustainable development challenges and club convergence processes. Three research questions were formulated in the article: (1) Does the regional economic development of voivodeships affect the energy intensity of public urban transport? (2) Does urbanisation shape energy consumption patterns in public urban transport (and are there agglomeration effects)? (3) Does the level of urbanisation of voivodeships depend on their regional level? The study covered 16 subregions of Poland from 2010 to 2020. A spatial dynamic exploration of the relationships between energy intensity patterns of public urban transport and the phenomenon of urbanisation and regional economic development was carried out. Panel models of vector autoregression and panel causality testing were used. The influence of the economic development of regions and the level of urbanisation on energy intensity patterns of public urban transport was confirmed. The link between economic development and the process of urbanisation was identified. An additional effect was noticed (novelty knowledge), i.e., there is a delayed club convergence between voivodeships in the area of energy intensity of public urban transport, regional economic development and urbanisation (polyconvergence).

Keywords

• energy intensity
• environmental Kuznets curve
• panel granger causality
• panel VAR
• polyconvergence
• public urban transport