An empirical investigation of nuclear energy and environmental pollution nexus in India: fresh evidence using NARDL...

Environmental pollution caused by carbon emissions is an emerging issue to study among researchers. The nexus between environmental pollution and carbon emissions has motivated researchers to evaluate the impact of cleaner energy on carbon emissions. This study further contributes to the research by examining the above relationship by studying the asymmetric influence of nuclear energy (NE), industrial productivity (IP), and economic growth rate (GDP) on carbon emissions (CO₂) in India from 1975 to 2018 using the asymmetric autoregressive distribution lag approach. The results of the bound test and the Wald test show that in the long run, there is an asymmetric relationship between CO₂, NE, GDP, and IP, and in the short run, there is a symmetric relationship between CO₂, GDP, and IP. The result implies that increased usage of nuclear energy over fossil fuels and improvement in industrial productivity, in the long run, reduces CO₂ emission in India. Furthermore, the study concludes that the government should consider the asymmetric relationship between the variables and devise appropriate policies to increased nuclear energy and industrial productivity in India for environmental sustainability.