Impact of Information and Communication Technologies and Renewable Energy Consumption on Carbon Emissions in Africa

Abstract

The pursuit of economic growth has implications for carbon emissions and climate change. Achieving low carbon development is important for attaining the targets of the sustainable development goals. Africa is often described as a largely import-dependent continent. The continent also requires significant investment in information and communication technologies (ICT) and renewable energy to achieve low-carbon economic growth. However, empirical evidence on the joint impacts of imports of goods and services, clean energy use, ICT, and economic growth on carbon emissions in Africa is scanty and mixed. This paper investigated the impacts of information and communication technologies, renewable energy consumption, import and economic growth on carbon emissions by using rich data on total per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, economic growth, import of goods and services, renewable energy consumption, fixed telephone subscriptions, mobile cellular subscriptions, and individuals using the internet in Africa (2001 ─ 2020) obtained from the World development indicators (WDI) database. Using the Panel autoregressive distributed lag model (PARDL), we found that mobile cellular subscriptions, and level of economic growth significantly increased per capita CO2 emissions in Africa in the long run while renewable energy consumption and technologies and import of goods and services significantly decreased per capita CO2 emissions in the long run. We conclude that information and communication technologies, level of economic growth, import of goods and services, and renewable energy consumption exert impacts on carbon emissions in Africa.