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

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.

Keywords: CO2 emissions; Cleaner cooking fuels; Energy efficiency; Energy security; Environmental sustainability; ICT trade; Renewable energy transition.

Fig. 1

ICT goods trade across South Asia (2000–2015)

Fig. 2

Energy-use intensities in South Asia (1991–2016)

Fig. 3

ACFT for cooking trends in South Asia (2000–2016)

Fig. 4

Carbon dioxide emissions in South Asia (2000–2016)

Fig. 5

The equivocal impacts of ICT trade on Environmental Quality

Fig. 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