The Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis for carbon and ecological footprints in South Asia: the role of renewable energy

Mitigation of environmental deterioration along the economic growth stream has become a critically important policy agenda among governments across the globe. Thus, the contemporary growth policies are ought to be aligned with the environmental sustainability targets as well. Against this backdrop, this paper aimed to evaluate the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis using carbon and total ecological footprints to quantify environmental quality in the context of five South Asian economies: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Moreover, the EKC hypothesis analysis is precisely focused on the role of promoting renewable energy use for mitigating the environmental adversities in South Asia. Using annual data from 1995 to 2015 and controlling for cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity issues, the results confirmed the validity of the EKC hypothesis for the panel of the selected South Asian nations. Besides, enhancing the levels of renewable energy consumption and renewable electricity outputs were found to be pertinent in diminishing the carbon and ecological footprints. Moreover, the country-specific analysis led to statistical validation of the EKC hypothesis for Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka but not for Pakistan. However, enhancing the overall use of renewable energy was unanimously associated with environmental betterment in all five South Asian nations. Hence, the results implicate that economic growth is both the short-run cause and the long-run solution to the environmental adversities within South Asia. Besides, augmenting renewable energy into the national energy-mixes is ideal for safeguarding environmental well-being in South Asia.