Effects of energy consumption and ecological footprint on CO2 emissions: an empirical evidence from Pakistan

This study aims twofold; first, to analyze the effects of traditional energy, renewable energy, ecological footprint, urbanization, transportation on carbon dioxide emission (CO2), and second to investigate the association between the emission of the CO2 and temperature over Pakistan. The present investigation utilized long-term series data from 1970 to 2018 and employed the autoregressive distributed lag model to examine the relationship between modeled variables. Moreover, this investigation employed fully modified ordinary least-squares and dynamic ordinary least-square model to confirm the robustness of the results. The study found an insignificant impact of traditional energy, renewable energy, and ecological footprint on CO2 in the short-run period. However, in the long run, traditional energy, the ecological footprint has significant and positive, while renewable energy has a negative and significant association with CO2. Moreover, the study found a significant impact of urbanization and transportation on CO2 emission into short and long-run periods. The results indicate that impact of CO2 emission, urbanization and transportation on average temperature in Pakistan is positive and significant in short-run as well as in long-run period. This research indicates that appropriate policies should be devised for the energy sector like Government should discourage traditional consumption of energy and encourage the consumption of renewable energy in the industrial sector.