Do natural gas and renewable energy consumption lead to less CO2 emission? Empirical evidence from a panel of BRICS countries

This study is the first attempt to investigate the nexus among per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, gross domestic product (GDP), and natural gas and renewable energy consumption within the framework of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), in a 1985-2016 sample of BRICS countries (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). For this purpose, panel unit root, cointegration, and causality tests allowing for cross-sectional dependence are conducted. Employing the augmented mean group (AMG) estimator, the results provide strong evidence in favor of the EKC hypothesis for the BRICS countries by proposing that the EKC holds in all five BRICS countries; the turning points (TPs) lie between $4282.90 (India) and $16,553.77 (China), while the turning years (TYs) are estimated to be between 2018 (Russia) and 2035 (India). Furthermore, increasing natural gas and renewable energy consumption lowers CO2 emissions, which indicates that, 1% increase in natural gas and renewable energy consumption for the BRICS countries will decrease CO2 emissions by 0.1641% and 0.2601%, respectively. The causality analysis underscores feedback hypothetical links among CO2 emissions, natural gas consumption, and renewable energy consumption in the long run. Some policy implications are highlighted for BRICS countries' policymakers not only for tackling CO2 emissions, but also for promoting growth in the natural gas and renewable energy industries. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.