Does ICT-Trade Openness ensure Energy and Environmental Sustainability? Empirical Evidence from selected South Asian Economies

Consumption of fossil fuels has triggered worldwide awareness to attain sustainability with respect to ensuring adequate energy access and mitigating environmental adversities, globally. Against this background, this paper aimed at investigating the impacts of enhancing ICT-trade openness on the transition from non-renewable to renewable energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in the context of six South Asian economies. The overall results from the econometric analyses confirm that greater openness to ICT-trade leads to greater consumption of renewable energy, reduces the intensity of energy-use and enhances the access to clean fuel and technology for cooking. However, although ICT trade is found to foster renewable energy consumption across South Asia, it fails to ensure renewable energy transition completely since greater openness to ICT-trade curbs the share of renewables in the aggregate energy consumption figures. Moreover, trade of ICT goods is found to reduce the levels of carbon emissions as well. Thus, these results impose key policy implications for the governments with respect to ensuring energy security alongside environmental sustainability across South Asia