The primary objectives of this paper is to scrutinize the long-run relationship and the causal linkage between oil consumption, nuclear energy consumption, oil prices and economic growth. For this purpose, Johansen cointegration technique is applied using time series data for four emerging economies: Russia, China, South Korea and India, over the period from 1965 to 2010. Johansen cointegration results indicate that there is a long-run relationship between the proposed variables in each country. Exclusion tests show that both energy sources enter the cointegration space significantly (except for Russia), which suggests that energy has a long-run impact on economic growth. Results of the causal linkage between the variables point that energy consumption (i.e., oil or nuclear) has either a predictive power for economic growth, or a feedback impact between with real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in all countries. Hence, energy conservation policies might harmful negative consequences on the growth of economic for this group of countries. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.