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.