Repercussions of Hydroelectricity Use on Carbon Emissions in Bangladesh: Evidence Using Novel Fourier-Bootstrapped Ardl and Fourier-Gradual Shift Causality Analyses

Abstract

Bangladesh has recently pledged at the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) to reduce its carbon dioxide emission figures by 22% at the end of 2030. However, since this South Asian country has always turned to fossil fuels for electricity generation purposes, achieving this emission reduction goal is a challenging task for the Bangladesh government. Nevertheless, considering the negative environmental implications associated with the generation and consumption of unclean energy, particularly electricity, it is critically important for Bangladesh to expedite the process of clean transformation of its traditional pollution-intensive power system. Hence, the objective of this study is to dissect the repercussions of hydroelectricity use on Bangladesh’s fossil fuel consumption-related carbon dioxide As opposed to the traditional method of quantifying environmental quality using total carbon dioxide emissions, this study considers Bangladesh’s annual carbon dioxide emissions generated from the combustion of gas, oil, and coal. Besides, novel Fourier-based econometric methods that effectively handle structural break problems in data are utilized in this study. Based on the results, it is found that up-scaling hydroelectricity consumption levels exert emission-inhibiting effects while greater economic globalization activities are witnessed to boost the emissions. More importantly, hydroelectricity consumption and economic globalization are observed to jointly curb fossil fuel consumption-based emissions of carbon dioxide. Additionally, the results verify the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for Bangladesh. Furthermore, financial sector development is found to be effective in reducing the natural gas consumption-related carbon dioxide emissions while urbanization is held responsible for amplifying emissions generated from all three types of fossil fuels. Therefore, considering these findings, the Bangladesh government needs to particularly emphasize scaling up production and consumption of hydroelectricity to decarbonize its economy.