Nexus among the hydropower energy consumption, economic growth, and CO2 emissions: evidence from BRICS countries

The present paper investigates the effects of hydropower energy consumption on economic growth and CO2 emissions in the BRICS countries, spanning the period 1990–2016. To achieve this aim of the study, we employ the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and panel quantile regression (PQR) estimations. The results confirm that hydropower energy consumption has a positive association with economic growth in the long run and short run, and negative association with CO2 emissions in the long run. Further, our panel quantile regression showed that the effects of independent variables on economic growth and CO2 emissions are heterogeneous across the quantiles. Specifically, the effect of hydropower energy use significantly promotes economic growth across all quantiles (expect 10th quantile), while hydropower energy use has a negative and positive impact on CO2 emissions in the lower and higher quantiles, respectively. Given these findings, our study offers substantial value to empirical literature and also provides important policy implications.