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An empirical investigation of nuclear energy and environmental pollution nexus in India: fresh evidence using NARDL approach

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Abstract

Environmental pollution caused by carbon emissions is an emerging issue to study among researchers. The nexus between environmental pollution and carbon emissions has motivated researchers to evaluate the impact of cleaner energy on carbon emissions. This study further contributes to the research by examining the above relationship by studying the asymmetric influence of nuclear energy (NE), industrial productivity (IP), and economic growth rate (GDP) on carbon emissions (CO2) in India from 1975 to 2018 using the asymmetric autoregressive distribution lag approach. The results of the bound test and the Wald test show that in the long run, there is an asymmetric relationship between CO2, NE, GDP, and IP, and in the short run, there is a symmetric relationship between CO2, GDP, and IP. The result implies that increased usage of nuclear energy over fossil fuels and improvement in industrial productivity, in the long run, reduces CO2 emission in India. Furthermore, the study concludes that the government should consider the asymmetric relationship between the variables and devise appropriate policies to increased nuclear energy and industrial productivity in India for environmental sustainability.

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Data availability

The datasets used during the study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge all the anonymous referees and participants for contributing to the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Commerce, Management and Economics, Shri Ramswaroop Memorial University, Lucknow, India

    Aamir Aijaz Syed

  2. Department of Economics, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan (KP), Mardan, Pakistan

    Muhammad Abdul Kamal

  3. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, India

    Ravindra Tripathi

Authors
  1. Aamir Aijaz Syed
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  2. Muhammad Abdul Kamal
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  3. Ravindra Tripathi
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Contributions

Aamir Aijaz Syed (A.S.S), Muhammad Abdul Kamal (M.A.K), Ravindra Tripathi (R.T). Conceptualization, A.S.S; methodology, A.S.S and M.A.K; validation, A.S.S, M.A.K, and R.T; writing original draft preparation, A.S.S, M.A.K, and R.T; writing review and editing, A.S.S, M.A.K, and R.T. Finally all authors have contributed equally to the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Aamir Aijaz Syed.

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Syed, A.A., Kamal, M.A. & Tripathi, R. An empirical investigation of nuclear energy and environmental pollution nexus in India: fresh evidence using NARDL approach. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 54744–54755 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14365-9

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