Impact of nuclear and renewable energy sources on environment quality: Testing the EKC and LCC hypotheses for South Korea

This study investigates the impacts of nuclear energy consumption on environmental quality from a different perspective by focusing on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, ecological footprint, and load ca-pacity factor. In this context, the South Korea case, which is a leading country producing and consuming nuclear energy, is investigated by considering also economic growth, and the 1997 Asian crisis from 1977 to 2018. To this end, the study employs the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. Different from previous literature, this study proposes a load capacity curve (LCC) and tests the LCC and envi-ronmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypotheses simultaneously. The analysis results reveal that (i) the LCC and EKC hypotheses are valid in South Korea; (ii) nuclear energy has an improving effect on the envi-ronmental quality; (iii) renewable energy does not have a significant long-term impact on the envi-ronment; (iv) the 1997 Asian crisis had an increasing effect on the load capacity factor; (v) South Korea has not yet reached the turning point, identified as $55,411, where per capita income improves envi-ronmental quality. Overall, the results show the validity of the LCC and EKC hypotheses and prove the positive contribution of nuclear energy to South Korea's green development strategies.(c) 2022 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study explores the impact of nuclear energy consumption on environmental quality, focusing on CO2 emissions, ecological footprint, and load capacity factor. It analyzes the case of South Korea, a leading country in nuclear energy production and consumption, considering economic growth and the 1997 Asian crisis. The study utilizes the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and proposes and tests the load capacity curve (LCC) and environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypotheses simultaneously. The results confirm the validity of the hypotheses and highlight the positive contribution of nuclear energy to South Korea's green development strategies.