Article Role of high technology exports for energy efficiency: Empirical evidence in the context of Gulf Cooperation Council countries Rida Waheed 1,2 , Suleman Sarwar 1,2 and Zouheir Mighri 2,3 Abstract This article explores the impacts of high technology exports on energy consumption, energy intensity, and carbon intensity for a panel of six GCC economies covering a period of 1990 to 2017. For detailed empirical analysis, we employ panel techniques to explore the linkages between high technology exports and energy efficiency in GCC countries. The empirical results demonstrate that high technology exports help to reduce overall energy demand with À0.154% and energy intensity with À0.254% in GCC countries. Notably, we observe that effects on technology exports on carbon intensity are significantly lower in magnitude with À0.010%. Notably, the long empirics are in consistent with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) of GCC countries (cleaner and affordable energy, environmental awareness, climate change action, etc.). The findings suggest that new and innovative energy conservation policies should be introduced to promote energy efficient equipment’s and technologies for cleaner and greener growth. Keywords High technology exports, energy economics, energy intensity, carbon intensity, economic growth, econometrics 1 School of Economics, Shandong University, Shandong, China 2 Finance and Economics Department, College of Business, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 3 Research Laboratory for Economy, Management and Quantitative Finance (LaREMFiQ), University of Sousse, Sousse, Tunisia Corresponding author: Suleman Sarwar, Finance and Economics Department, College of Business, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Email: ch.sulemansarwar@gmail.com Energy & Environment 0(0) 1–17 ! The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0958305X20954196 journals.sagepub.com/home/eae