Climate policy uncertainty, media coverage of climate change, and energy markets: New evidence from time-varying causality analysis

Abstract

Climate change is one of the most critical issues in the last decade, making investigating climate change risks' effects on the economy vital. Employing a novel time-varying Granger causality approach, we test causality from climate policy uncertainty (CPU) to the index returns of clean energy and nonrenewable energy sectors between November 2009 and December 2021. Our analysis generally reveals a significant causality from CPU to S&P clean energy sector index return throughout the sample period. In contrast, very limited significant causality is observed running from the CPU to the S&P nonrenewable energy index return. This result implies that investments in clean energy firms are affected by the CPU due to the cost of reversing the decisions in uncertain environments. On the other hand, the U.S. newspaper media coverage of climate change has a significant impact not only on the clean energy index returns but also on non-renewable energy index returns, implying an increase in the media coverage regarding climate change influences the awareness of investors on climate change, which affects their trading strategies.