Analysis of asymmetries in the nexus between bioenergy and ecological footprint: Evidence from European economies

Renewable energy has grown in popularity since it is cheaper and more efficient than typical energy sources. The study evaluates the asymmetries in the nexus between bioenergy consumption and ecological footprint in the top-10 bioenergy-consuming European nations (Germany, France, Austria, Spain, UK, Sweden, Portugal, Italy, Finland, and Poland) utilizing the data for the years 1991-2019. Most past studies rely on panel data method-ologies to provide results on the bioenergy-environmental quality nexus, neglecting that certain countries have no evidence of this type of relation separately. On the contrary, the current research employs a unique method "Quantile-on-Quantile", which can explore the time-series dependency for each economy independently to provide worldwide yet nation-specific insights about the relationship between the variables. The results analyze how the quantiles of bioenergy consumption influence the quantiles of ecological footprint asymmetrically by giving an adequate foundation for understanding the overall interdependent structure. Bioenergy consumption considerably minimizes the ecological footprint at different quantiles in most of our selected economies. How-ever, the degree of asymmetry in the variables differs by nation, needing extra care and government scrutiny when formulating bioenergy and environmental sustainability regulations.