Do information and communication technology and renewable energy use matter for carbon dioxide emissions reduction? Evidence from the Middle East and North Africa region

Abstract

This study aims to investigate whether information and communication technologies (ICT) and renewable energy consumption can help improve environmental quality for a selected group of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. By using the Panel Vector Autoregressive model over the period 1980–2019, the results show evidence for the first-order effects of ICTs on CO2 emissions, indicating that the use of ICT in the current economic development context of the MENA region lead to a deterioration of the environmental quality.The results also show that renewable energy consumption improves environmental quality whatever the sample and the proxy for ICT used. Overall, the results of the impulse responses functions (IRFs) show that the impact of shocks on ICT and renewable energy last between 1 and 7 years. The results of the IRFs are confirmed by the forecast error variance decomposition analysis, which shows that the contributions of ICT and renewable energy to the variability of CO2 emissions is not zero. Finally, in tests for causality, the results reveal evidence for bidirectional causality in most cases between CO2 emissions and ICT and renewable energy consumption. To benefit from the potential positive impact of ICT and renewable energy consumption on the quality of the environment, several ICT and renewable energy policies have been developed and discussed.