This paper attempts to model the relationship between CO2 emission, Energy consumption and economic growth in Nigeria using Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. The aim is to make a useful contribution to the gap that exists in the literatures that studied the relationship between energy consumption, CO2 emission and economic growth in Nigeria. This study uses regression equations of linear, quadratic and cubic functions to econometrically modelCO2 emission, energy consumption and economic growth (GDP) data. It was discovered that a quadratic relationship exist between CO2 emission and economic growth represented by the GDP.The inverted U shaped relationship between CO2 per capita emission and income akin to developed countries is also evident in developing Nigerian economy. Though this is surprising, national internal policy inertia explains this behavior rather than international treaty on CO2 emission that has been used to explain this behavior for developed nations.
Employing Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) method to forecast the dynamic CO2 behavior for Nigeria up to 2030 certeris paribus, our forecast shows that even though economic growth has historically been on the increase up to the end of period under study, (2010), CO2 emission per capita will continue to be on decrease to circa 400 (kg per capita) having crossed the turning point of the inverted U shaped EKC in about 2005. Government should continue to strengthen its policy on reduction of CO2 emitters in its economy with no consequence on economic growth as observed. We recommend further work to be done to include more explanatory variables to this work.