Citation:

Nidhi Kumari. "Determinants of Carbon Dioxide Emissions in BRICS Nations: An Empirical Analysis" International Research Journal of Economics and Management Studies, Vol. 4, No. 12, pp. 108-114, 2025. Crossref. http://doi.org/10.56472/25835238/IRJEMS-V4I12P113

Abstract:

The study seeks to identify the key determinants of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions across the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – utilizing an Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) modeling framework with annual data sourced from the World Development Indicators (WDI) and World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) databases. The analysis takes into account key economic, energy, and demographic variables including CO2 emissions, access to electricity, renewable energy consumption, fuel imports, clean fuel access, urban population as well as total population. The analysis primarily reveals heterogeneous long-run and short-run relationships among these variables across the nations. While India and Russia demonstrate a stable long run co-integration between emissions and economic and energy indicators, on the other hand, Brazil exhibits a partial evidence, and China along with South Africa show no long run equilibrium, indicating a substantial dominance of short-run dynamics. Consumption of renewable energy significantly curtails emissions in Brazil and India, with marginal effects in Russia and complete insignificance in China and South Africa. Moreover, GDP per capita emerges as a major driver in India and Russia but it tends to display inconsistent influence elsewhere. The findings reveal the need for a differentiated, targeted and context specific policy interventions emphasizing on renewable energy adoption, energy efficiency, and reduction of fossil fuel usage, to align economic growth with environmental sustainability within the BRICS framework. Besides, the insights from this work aim to contribute to the broader discourse on global climate governance and sustainable development goals implementation.

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Keywords:

BRICS, Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Fossil Fuels, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Development Goals.