The energy-growth nexus literature studies the causality between energy consumption and economic growth, which is typically represented with the GDP variable. The latter is criticized though, for being unable to measure genuine progress and welfare. The current study is one of a series of innovative studies that replace GDP with the Index of Sustainable Economic welfare as a proxy for sustainable GDP and discuss the different results. One of these series of studies concerns the Sub-Saharan African countries group. Africa is the only region in the world whose development status has been a crucial topic in the summits of G8 since 2000. Access to modern energy and its proper management is the only solution to solve the sustainability problems faced in this continent. The study is complemented with results from other distinctive groups of countries and lends useful insights to policymakers, since when energy conservation measures are proposed, the implications are quite different for conventional GDP and sustainable GDP.
