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Designing hydro-energy led economic growth for pollution abatement: evidence from BRICS

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Abstract

Overutilized hydro-energy production through non-sustainable mode is detrimental for both the economy and the environment. Intermittent consumption of hydro-energy from non-sustainable production methods may induce deleterious impacts in terms of rapid pollution in the economy. This paper investigates the impacts of hydro-power consumption upon pollution for 5 BRICS countries from 1965 to 2019. Our balanced panel model shows that infrequent usages of hydro-power consumption led to more pollution over the year. This relation is also further explained by considering several macroeconomic factors, in the context of the growth scenario. Our empirical findings show that an increase in population and consequent rise in per capita income have exhibited positive impacts on pollution. Even, improved industrialized led production and investment in these economies contribute heavily towards pollution and declined environmental standards. Our results further state that intermittent usages of natural resources by population in terms of rising ecological footprint have resulted in higher emission intensity over the year. These findings underscore how rising hydro-power energy consumption has led to the rising pollution amidst the growth scenario in BRICS economies.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the World Development Indicators (2020) BP Statistical Review of World Energy and Global Ecological footprint database. Links: https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators#

Notes

  1. Renewable energy sources and climate change mitigation special report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, Cambridge University Press.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the editor, associate editor, and anonymous referees of the journal for their extremely useful suggestions for the improvement of this paper. The usual disclaimers apply.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management and Entrepreneurship, Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, 342037, India

    Devi Prasad Dash

  2. Department of Economics, IBS Hyderabad, IFHE University, IBS Hyderabad-501 203, Telangana, India

    Aruna Kumar Dash

  3. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Rourkela, Rourkela, 769008, Odisha, India

    Narayan Sethi

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  1. Devi Prasad Dash
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  2. Aruna Kumar Dash
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Contributions

All the authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by AKD and NS and analysis was performed by DPD. The first draft of the manuscript was written by DPD and AKD; and NS commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Appendix

Appendix

Tables 15, 16, and 17.

Table 15 Results of panel unit root tests
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Table 16 Cross-sectional dependence (CSD)
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Table 17 Panel causality test
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Dash, D.P., Dash, A.K. & Sethi, N. Designing hydro-energy led economic growth for pollution abatement: evidence from BRICS. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 31252–31269 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17890-9

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