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An empirical analysis of the non-linear impacts of ICT-trade openness on renewable energy transition, energy efficiency, clean cooking fuel access and environmental sustainability in South Asia

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Abstract

Energy security and environmental sustainability have become an integral policy agenda worldwide whereby the global economic growth policies are being restructured to ensure the reliability of energy supply and safeguard environmental well-being as well. However, technological inefficiency is one of the major hindrances in attaining these over-arching goals. Hence, this paper probed into the non-linear impacts of ICT trade on the prospects of undergoing renewable energy transition, improving energy use efficiencies, enhancing access to cleaner cooking fuels, and mitigating carbon dioxide emissions across selected South Asian economies: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Maldives. The results from the econometric analyses reveal that ICT trade directly increases renewable energy consumption, enhances renewable energy shares, reduces intensity of energy use, facilitates adoption of cleaner cooking fuels, and reduces carbon-dioxide emissions. Moreover, ICT trade also indirectly mitigates carbon-dioxide emissions through boosting renewable energy consumption levels, improving energy efficiencies, and enhancing cleaner cooking fuel access. Hence, these results, in a nutshell, portray the significance of reducing the barriers to ICT trade with respect to ensuring energy security and environmental sustainability across South Asia. Therefore, it is ideal for the government to gradually lessen the trade barriers to boost the volumes of cross-border flows of green ICT commodities. Besides, it is also recommended to attract foreign direct investments for the potential development of the respective ICT sectors of the South Asian economies.

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Notes

  1. For an in-depth understanding of the RET phenomenon see Murshed (2018).

  2. For further information on goal 7 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals see https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg7

  3. This prediction was made without considering the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic which resulted in a significant drop in the world demand for energy.

  4. The selection of the South Asian economies was based on data availability.

  5. The reciprocal of the energy use intensity can be considered as the efficiency level of energy utilization in the economy. Hence, a decrease (or increase) in the intensity could be interpreted as an increase (or decrease) in the energy efficiency level.

  6. The claims made by Vanek (1968) are based on keeping the factor endowments across the exporting and importing nations into consideration.

  7. For justification regarding the inclusion of the life expectancy at birth and secondary school enrolment rates variables into model 4, see Murshed (2018).

  8. The decision to include REC and NREC in separate models was made to avoid the potential multicollinearity and endogeneity issues.

  9. For more information on the EKC hypothesis see Pata (2018).

  10. For more information on the pollution haven hypothesis see Cole (2004).

  11. For in-depth information regarding the scale, composition and technique effects associated with economic growth see Tsurumi and Managi (2010).

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    Muntasir Murshed

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Fig. 6
figure 6

ICT denotes Information and Communications Technology; REC and RES refer to renewable energy consumption and share of renewable energy in total final energy consumption, respectively; The red arrows denote the direct impacts of ICT trade on renewable energy transition, energy efficiency enhancement, greater access to cleaner cooking fuels, and lower CO2 emissions. The orange arrows denote the indirect impacts of ICT on CO2 emissions. The potential benefits of enhancing ICT trade for RET, energy efficiency, and environmental sustainability

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Table 10 Panel Granger causality test results
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Table 11 Panel Granger causality test results
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Table 12 Geweke’s (1982) measure of instantaneous feedback results
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Table 13 Geweke’s (1982) measure of instantaneous feedback results
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Murshed, M. An empirical analysis of the non-linear impacts of ICT-trade openness on renewable energy transition, energy efficiency, clean cooking fuel access and environmental sustainability in South Asia. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 36254–36281 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-09497-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-09497-3

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JEL classifications