This study investigated the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a panel of twenty one emerging countries over the 1980/2018 period. Given the limited time series, a co-integration of panel data and an error correction model were used to infer a causal relationship using autoregressive distributed lag models. The panel heterogeneous co-integration test revealed that there is a long-term equilibrium relationship between real income, renewable energy consumption, gross fixed capital formation, and labor force in which the coefficients are respectively positive and statistically significant. The Granger causality results indicate a causality direction between renewable energy consumption and short and long-term economic growth. Using the autoregressive lag model procedure, the causal relationship was found to vary significantly from one country to another. Regarding our sample of emerging countries, it was noted that there was a unidirectional causal relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth. This result implies that governments are urged to apply effective energy conservation policies.