Effects of renewable and non‐renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions in India: Empirical evidence from disaggregated data analysis

• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Author: Malayaranjan Sahoo,Jayantee Sahoo
• Date: 01 February 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2307

ACADEMIC PAPER

Effects of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption

on CO

2

emissions in India: Empirical evidence from

disaggregated data analysis

Malayaranjan Sahoo

1

| Jayantee Sahoo

2

1

Department of Humanities and Social

Sciences, National Institute of Technology

(NIT) Rourkela, Rourkela, India

2

Department of Higher Education, Odisha,

Bhubaneswar, India

Correspondence

Malayaranjan Sahoo, Department of

Humanities and Social Sciences, National

Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela,

Rourkela, Odisha, India.

Email: sahoomalayaranjan4@gmail.com

In this paper, we examined the relationship between renewable and non-renewable

energy consumption on CO

2

emissions in India by taking disaggregated data from

1965 to 2018. In order to determine the effect of long-run elasticity of independent

variables on dependent variables, we have used ARDL bound testing approach. The

directions of causality of the variables are investigated by Toda–Yamamoto Granger

causality test. The long-run results reveal that hydro energy consumption has a posi-

tive impact on CO

2

emissions but not significant. However, nuclear energy consump-

tion indicates that there is a negative effect on CO

2

emissions. It reveals that all

non-renewable energy consumption sources have positive and significant effect on

CO

2

emissions.

1|INTRODUCTION

For more than two decades, the growing challenge of global

warming and climate change has become a significant, continuing

issue worldwide. It was in 1995, when, for the first time, the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared that

“the balance of evidence indicates a discernible human effect on

global warming”. Nevertheless, this argument recognized a variety

of questionable and even doubtful conclusions and thus these

findings were viewed as provisional. But more recently, the

IPCC (2014) reported that global warming has been confirmed to

be triggered by rising amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) and

other anthropogenic activities. Researchers believe that the major

factors contributing to rising GHG emission include industrial

growth and electricity consumption, among others. Over the

years, both policymakers and analysts have received considerable

attention to the connection between energy consumption, green-

house gases and economic growth, as achieving sustainable eco-

nomic growth has increasingly become a major global concern. It

should be remembered that, according to the COP 21 report, the

countries decided to make gradual reductions thereafter, in accor-

dance with the best available science, in order to strike a compro-

mise between anthropogenic pollution from sources and the

elimination of greenhouse gas sinks in the latter half of this

century, on the basis of equity and in the sense of sustainable

growth and efficiency (COP, 2016).

There are large numbers of studies (Apergis, Ben Jebli, & Ben

Youssef, 2018; Balsalobre-Lorente, Shahbaz, Roubaud, &

Farhani, 2018; Hanif, 2018; Wang, Su, & Li, 2018) on the relationship

between energy consumption, economic growth and CO

2

emissions.

They found that urban areas' consumption of fossil fuels significantly

contribute or reduce environmental quality. They also claimed that in

some region economic growth has decoupling environmental quality,

whereas it improves environmental quality in some other regions. A

second dimension looks at the relation between energy consumption

and production, indicating that energy consumption and production

should be calculated together, and checking the course of causality

between these two variables. Kraft and Kraft (1978) used annual

U.S. statistics from 1947 to 1974 in their seminal research to analyse

the connection between gross national product (GNP) and gross

energy inputs. They find that heightened GNP contributes to

decreased energy intake. Murray and Nan (1992) discovered that

increasing economic growth culminated in increased energy usage.

Cheng and Lai (1997) showed a unidirectional link between actual

GDP and Taiwanian energy use. From the literature, we found that

most of the studies, firstly, have taken aggregate energy consumption

to determine the environmental quality; secondly, there was very little

discussion in India, regarding the effect of cleaner energy on

Received: 22 June 2020 Revised: 18 July 2020 Accepted: 20 July 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2307

J Public Affairs. 2022;22:e2307. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1of12

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2307