The transition towards a modern cleaner energy pathway has been receiving global attention recently. Although nuclear energy has emerged as an alternative cleaner energy source and is receiving ...immense policy attention, however, the role of nuclear energy in the environmental degradation mitigation remains inconclusive in the extant literature. Therefore, this study examines the dynamic linkages between gross domestic product, foreign direct investment inflows, nuclear energy consumption, trade openness, and CO
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emissions for India within the environmental Kuznets curve framework over the period 1978–2019 through various robust econometric models that takes into consideration the presence of structural break in the data. The present study confirms the existence of an “inverted N shape” environmental Kuznets curve, a phenomenon rarely observed in environmental Kuznets curve literature for India. Besides, the predicted turnaround points of environmental Kuznets curve highlight that India has already reached the positive peak approximately by the year 2015. The empirical findings also confirm the existence of a J-shaped relationship between foreign direct investment inflows and CO
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emissions, which indicates that India is in the transient phase moving from pollution halo towards pollution heaven with progressive foreign direct investment development. Trade openness is also found to have a beneficial effect on environmental quality implying the trade policy of India encourages green trade activities to safeguard the environment. The empirical results also reveal the beneficial effect of nuclear energy consumption on air quality, thereby suggesting an accelerated adoption of nuclear energy in the Indian energy mix. The results also highlight that nuclear energy adoption in this booming phase can facilitate a “tunnelling effect” for sustainable economic growth for India. Hence, these findings may provide key policy recommendations regarding energy transition and environmentally sustainable economic growth.
India is predominantly a fossil fuel-intensive South Asian country that has traditionally settled for higher economic gains at the expense of lower environmental quality. However, in the contemporary ...era, it has become essential for India to come up with viable solutions that can enable the nation to transform its economy into a low-carbon one. Although replacing fossil fuel use with renewable energy sources is assumed to be the ideal pathway to decarbonizing the Indian economy, achieving this clean energy transition involves a long-term process. Thus, the Indian government should rather consider adoption of interim solutions to the environmental pollution problems faced by the nation. Against this backdrop, this study looks at whether enhancing the consumption level of liquefied petroleum gas, a relatively cleaner fossil fuel, can help India reduce its carbon dioxide emissions figures and attain environmentally sustainable economic growth. The econometric analysis is designed as per the theoretical framework of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis whereby the effects of economic growth on carbon dioxide emissions are examined controlling for liquefied petroleum gas consumption in the context of India between 1990 and 2018. Based on the findings from the autoregressive distributed lag model bounds test analysis, it is witnessed that there are long-run cointegrating relationships among per capita levels of carbon dioxide emissions, real gross domestic product, and liquefied petroleum gas consumption of India. Besides, the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is found to be valid only in the short run; however, it does not sustain in the long run since the economic growth-carbon dioxide emissions nexus is observed to follow a U-shaped relationship in the long run. Moreover, higher liquefied petroleum gas consumption is found to boost carbon dioxide emissions in the short run while reducing it in the long run. Furthermore, the findings from the wavelet and partial wavelet coherence and causality analyses also advocate in favor of promoting the use of liquefied petroleum gas in India in order to significantly curb the energy use-related carbon dioxide emission figures of the nation. Hence, considering these important findings, this study recommends that the Indian government should design policies for augmenting liquefied petroleum gas into the national energy mix and also adopt relevant green economic growth strategies in order to facilitate environmentally-sustainable growth of its economy.
The current era of industrial development and innovation is revolutionized using the internet, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, the appraisal of global economic progress shows ...increasing trends, there are environmental degradation issues associated with this improvement. The role of renewable energy, urbanization and foreign direct investment received a lot of attention in the literature on environmental issues, however, the simultaneity with information communication technology is missing. Therefore, the present study used data from 10 emerging countries during 1996–2015 and applied the novel Method of Moments Quantile Regression to analyze the nexus among the variables. Further, we applied the second-generation unit root test, and Driscoll Kraay standard errors to reach robust results. The findings revealed an inverted U-shape relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation; thus, the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve is revealed. Moreover, foreign direct investment is significant and positive at 0.05th-0.50th quantiles, however, it becomes insignificant at higher quantile levels. Urbanization enhances while renewable energy mitigates carbon dioxide emissions at all quantile levels. Information communication technology proxied by internet usage reduces environmental degradation significantly at 0.25th-0.95th quantile levels. Results of the study suggest insights for the policymakers to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions through encouraging renewable energy and internet use.
The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is a unique gauge for measuring the marine transportation of major dry bulk shipments. Increased sea freight is a precursor to the increase in economic activities. The ...volumes of sea trade and freight rates are influenced by import–export dynamics and changes in commodity prices. So, levels of commodity prices are monitored to gain insight into the anticipated demand for bulk shipments. In this study, the causality-in-quantiles (CiQ) model is used to model the causal relationship between BDI spot values and spot price of major dry bulk commodities like iron ore, aluminum, copper, agricultural products by considering 12 years of daily data. CiQ model is superior compared to other linear causality models as it helps in capturing the asymmetry and nonlinearity in causality based on different quantiles or market conditions i.e., bearish, normal, and bullish market conditions. Also, it captures the causality-in-mean as well as variance and helps in exploring the causal relationship in returns as well as volatility transmission between BDI and commodity prices. The finding of the paper throws interesting light on the asymmetric relationship between BDI and commodity prices- commodity prices are causing BDI in all market conditions, but the influence is stronger in normal periods than bearish and bullish periods. The causality from commodity to BDI follows a common pattern across most of the commodities. However, the effect of BDI on commodities considerably varies across the range of commodities and across market conditions. So, this model provides a plethora of information that will help commodity market participants to hedge the risk of variations in commodity price and freight rates effectively.
The growing climate change debate necessitates a shift towards usage of clean energy in economic activities of developing and developed countries. However, existing studies are skeptical to consider ...nuclear energy as clean energy in primary energy-mix. This context addresses a question of whether top nuclear energy-consuming economies (i.e. Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Russia, and USA) have same or differential ecological footprints. This question addressed here is not yet studied, motivating us to examine the impact of nuclear energy consumption on ecological footprint in nine nuclear energy-consuming countries. This study uses novel Quantile-on-Quantile Regression (QQR) method to perform the country-specific analysis using the time series data from 1995 to 2016. The empirical findings highlight asymmetric effects of nuclear energy consumption on ecological footprints. The results evidence a strong negative impact of nuclear energy on ecological footprints for USA, Sweden, and Canada across most of the quantiles. This implies that these economies are capable of reducing their ecological footprints because of relying on nuclear energy usage. We also find that South Korea, Russia, and Japan produce the mixed impacts (positive and negative) of nuclear energy consumption on ecological footprints across most of the quantiles. Surprisingly, nuclear energy consumption fuels ecological footprints for Germany, China and France across most of the quantiles, which indicates that these countries fail to protect the health of natural environment due to nuclear energy consumption.
•The impact of nuclear energy consumption on ecological footprints is examined.•Top nine nuclear energy consuming countries and data period 1995–2016 are included.•Quantile-on-Quantile Regression method is also applied to perform empirical exercise.•Asymmetric imapcts of nuclear energy use on ecological footprints are found.•Helpful policy guidelines for the abatement of ecological footprints are suggested.
Tourism industry is the lifeblood of many developing economies across the globe, and India is a hotspot of diverse cultural heritage and a beautiful natural landscape that has emerged as an ...attractive tourism destination recently. However, the global challenges of greenhouse gas emission have been acting as a detriment in sustainable tourism-led economic growth for India. In this study, the relationship between economic growth, hydropower consumption, and CO
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emission has been revisited for India by including tourism polynomials and energy intensity in the Environmental Kuznets Curve specification. The unique outcome provides evidence of “Inverted N-shaped” relationship between tourism and CO
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emission. Further, the negative impact of hydropower consumption suggests that a higher proportion of hydropower in the Indian energy mix would help to achieve its sustainable development goals while accelerating its economic growth. The outcome suggests sustainable tourism practices aligned with capital investment and hydropower promotion to achieve environmental sustainability in India.
The paradigm of sustainable tourism policy implications aims to prioritize the decoupling association between tourism development and environmental deterioration. The study revisits the dynamic ...associations among carbon dioxide emissions, economic growth, international tourism, education, renewable energy consumption, and gross capital formation for the case of India through the lens of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis framework. The long-run dynamics among the variables confirm the inverted U-shaped environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for India. The regression findings affirm that higher international tourist arrivals, renewable energy use, and gross capital formation curb emissions in the long run. Besides, the coefficient of the interaction term between tourist arrivals and capital formation is evidenced to be positive implying capital formation has not been conducive in the pathway of sustainable tourism practices. On the other hand, the negative coefficient of the interaction term between education index and renewable energy consumption unveils the importance of educational advancement in the pathway of renewable energy penetration to thrive environmental sustainability. This study concludes with some policy suggestions to be incorporated within the existing ecological and energy approaches that may aid India in practicing the smooth functioning of low-carbon tourism models.
Even though the literature is becoming more swamped with research on the causes of environmental degradation, the uniqueness of some nations that strongly emphasize resource depletion has been ...largely ignored. Following the concept of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), this study considers the resource richness of India while examining the consequences of natural resource rent (NRR), GDP, and the interaction of NRR and GDP on environmental degradation controlling urbanization and energy use. To this end, we harnessed data from 1970 to 2018 and applied dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (DARDL) simulation and frequency domain causality (FDC) approach. The baseline model reveals that economic activities have heterogeneous yet significant impacts on environmental quality, and we validate the existence of an “N-shaped” EKC hypothesis in India in the presence of CO2 emission as the dependent variable. However, we failed to verify the N-shaped EKC with the ecological footprint as our dependent variable. The natural resource rent, energy consumption, and urbanization are also positively linked to long-term environmental degradation. The interaction term of NRR and GDP positively impacts CO2 emissions and ecological footprint. In addition, the value of the turnaround point was higher with the interaction term compared to that without the interaction term, further indicating the negative externalities of the interaction term. According to FDC's results, a feedback loop between economic development and CO2 emissions is highlighted. The robustness check further endorses the findings of our baseline models. The insights have far-reaching policy implications, discussed in the ultimate section.
•Environmental degradation, natural resource rent (NRR), GDP, energy use, urbanization, and the interaction of NRR and GDP is investigated for India.•Validation of a “N-shaped” EKC using CO2 emissions as the dependent variable, but no EKC using ecological footprint (EF).•NRR is also found to be positively related with long-term environmental impact.•The interaction term of NRR and GDP positively impacts CO2 emission and EF.•A feedback loop between economic development and CO2 emissions is highlighted.
While the replacement of anthropogenic drivers of environmental degradation with green initiatives is increasingly becoming critical for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs), the lack of ...clear understanding of the heterogeneity in relationship with ecological indicators is creating roadblocks to the implementation of efficient policy measures. In this study, the heterogeneous effects of energy transition, technological innovation (TI), globalization (GLOB), and environmental tax (ETAX) on ecological footprint (EF) for G7 economies are analyzed from 1994 to 2020. The robust method of moments quantile regression (MMQreg) is utilized to observe the various level of impact across multiple quantiles. The results highlight the statistically significant positive impact of non-renewable energy (NRE) on EF, while a significant negative effect of other independent variables is observed with varying levels across quantiles. The study's outcome upholds the accelerated adoption of renewable energy (RE) and TI, whereby environmental tax significantly contributes to restricting the malpractice of ecological degradation. Furthermore, the (Dumitrescu and Hurlin, 2012) 1 causality result revealed a unidirectional causal relationship between NRE and GLOB to ecological footprint. While a bi-directional causality exists between RE, TI, and ETAX to ecological footprint. The unique insight from the analysis helps in formulating important policy recommendations, which are then discussed in the final section.
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The nexus between natural resource depletion and environmental quality has been a heated topic of debate among policy experts in recent years. This nexus is crucial to achieve Sustainable Development ...Goal (SDG) 13 which deals with climate change mitigation. However, the extant literature has not paid due attention to this nexus, particularly in the case of Mexico. Against this backdrop, the present study examines the relationship between ecological footprint and natural resource depletion, economic growth, energy consumption, technological innovation, and foreign direct investment in the Mexican economy. The present research leverages the novel dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) simulations approach and uses annual frequency data from 1980 to 2018. Empirical findings from the ARDL bounds test substantiate the presence of long-run association among studied variables. Furthermore, the result of the novel dynamic ARDL simulation does not validate the Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. Thus, implying that Mexico's economy remains at the scale stage, with a scope of economic expansion relative to environmental quality. However, the Pollution Haven Hypothesis (PHH) is validated. Interestingly, natural resource rent accompanied with energy use and foreign direct investment deteriorate the environmental quality in the short-and long-run. However, technological innovation seems to emanate as a panacea for environmental degradation in the long-run. Result analysis also demonstrates that 10% positive and negative simulation graphs for the studied variables. The Frequency Domain Causality analysis also corroborates the above findings. These findings have far-reaching policy implications for Mexico's sustainable environment amid prudent use of natural resources, which are prescribed in the final section.
•Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis is not valid for Mexico.•Findings support Pollution haven hypothesis (PHH).•Natural resources rent instigates the ecological footprint.•The intensity of energy use also escalates the ecological footprint.•Technological innovation offsets environmental pollution in the long-run.
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