Repercussions of Pakistan's renewable and non-renewable energies to the environmental footprint: Applying the non-linear ARDL estimation

Abstract

The energy consumption in Pakistan, both renewable and nonrenewable, is examined herein as an important factor in carbon emissions. Employing a nonlinear ARDL (auto-regressive distributed lag), the research examines data from 1980 to 2021. The results show that the use of renewable energy has a negligible effect when it comes to the nation's overall carbon emissions. This is mainly because the key pollutants in Pakistan's energy sector come from nonrenewable sources, such as coal and natural gas. However, the report observes that the carbon emissions within the nonrenewable energy sector are directly related to economic growth. A further theorem of the nonlinear analysis has brought the limited role of renewable energy in resolving environmental problems into sharper focus, perhaps due to its lower proportion of Pakistan's total energy mix. According to the study, improving the proportion of renewable energy is the only way to combat environmental problems.