Do the various sources of energy consumption affect the environmental degradation in India?

. India possesses ample opportunities for economic growth, resulting in a surge in electricity demand. As per the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), India's rank on environmental health and ecosystem viability stands at a lowly 168th out of 180 countries. Historically, India relied on fossil fuels for electricity generation, leading to substantial environmental degradation that have harmed the environment. In recent times, India has diversified its electricity generation sources, incorporating not only fossil fuels but also nuclear power and renewable resources. However, despite these changes, India still struggles with high CO 2 emissions which indicates the level of environmental degradation. Hence, this study aims to investigate the sources of energy consumption in India: fossil fuels, renewable energy, and nuclear energy. By utilising the ARDL and NARDL methodologies, this study enriches the empirical studies by examining energy consumption trends in India from 1985 to 2021. The findings of this study shed light on whether the adoption of renewable energy and nuclear energy significantly aids in reducing carbon emissions in India, thereby facilitating the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), Therefore, it is of the utmost necessity for India to emphasize the formation of clean energy in their energy policy to achieve the SDG7 by the year 2030. This study found a positive correlation between GDP per capita and CO 2 emissions, highlighting the urgent need to reduce India's dependency on fossil fuels. The ARDL analysis further confirms that fossil fuel-generated energy contributes to CO 2 emissions, whereas nuclear-generated energy reduces them


Introduction
Due to its vast population, India has a significant electricity consumption annually.India's demand for power has sharply increased in recent years as a result of the country's economic growth and rising urbanization.But India has a lot of problems trying to meet its need for electricity.The nation's electricity industry is characterized by a high level of inefficiency, subpar infrastructure, and excessive reliance on fossil fuels such as coal (Wang & Song 2019).As a result, India frequently has inconsistent electricity supplies, including frequent power outages and blackouts (Rehman & Hussain 2017).According to report by India energy outlook 2021, India is the nation that will have the greatest growth in energy consumption in 2024 due to its rapidly growing economy, population, urbanization, and industrialization (IEA 2023).
Consequently, it becomes imperative for a nation of this magnitude to shift its energy production from fossil fuels to renewable and clean sources (Qayyum et al. 2022, Ortega-Ruiz et al. 2022).Several countries still depend on fossil fuels as their main electricity source due to their ability to offer more reliable power (Chen et al. 2022, Martins et al. 2018).Nonetheless, it is not justifiable to compromise the value of the environment for the sake of electricity generation (Covert et al. 2016).Ahmed et al. (2022) and Sasmaz et al. (2020) suggest fossil fuel is the significant contributors to the emissions of CO2 and greenhouse gases, thereby playing a major role in the occurrence of severe climate change.Martins et al. (2019) offer evidence of substantial climate change, including global warming and the subsequent rise in temperatures worldwide.This phenomenon has led to the melting of arctic glaciers and the resulting increase in sea levels (Stokes et al. 2022, Yarzábal et al. 2021).Other past studies such as Gussmann & Hinkel (2021), Shah et al. (2020), and Piecuch (2020) recommend countries such as the Maldives and Pakistan, as well as coastal areas of the United States (Florida and Louisiana), are already experiencing coastal erosion due to rising sea levels.
The escalation of fossil fuel prices is often triggered by geopolitical conflicts in oil-exporting nations, which can include warfare.According to Estrada et al. (2020), conflicts in Middle Eastern countries disrupt the oil supply, leading to a significant increase in prices.A similar situation arose during the recent Russia-Ukraine conflict, due to the fact that Russia is one of the primary exporters of oil and natural gas in the world (Adekoya et al. 2022).Furthermore, the sanctions on Russia have also impacted global oil supply, resulting in price hikes (Mbah & Wasum 2022).As the results, the fluctuations of electricity tariff during political crises in oil-exporting nations exacerbates the | 169 ISSN: 2252-4940/© 2024.The Author(s).Published by CBIORE issue of energy security and encourages other countries to transition towards renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric facilities and solar power generation (Żuk & Żuk 2022, San-Akca et al. 2020).
The rise in CO2 emissions resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels presents significant concerns, including the potential damage to the ozone layer in the atmosphere (Baldwin & Lenton 2020).On this note, the air pollution associated with high CO2 emissions poses health risks, especially for individuals with preexisting respiratory conditions (Guo et al. 2019).The power generation relying on fossil fuels carries numerous detrimental consequences, potentially leading to irreversible damage.Hence, it is crucial to fully support the adoption of clean energy sources; apart from mitigating the issue of climate change, it also fosters sustainable economic growth (Gibba & Khan 2023).
India is undoubtedly poised to have a substantial annual electricity demand due to her status as the world's most populous country which could imply the potential for further growth, (Das et al. 2022).The rising levels of carbon dioxide emissions that are caused by the burning of fossil fuels to generate energy are giving people all over the world greater cause for concern (Ali et al., 2022).While this presents an unavoidable challenge, the implementation of clean energy infrastructure offers hope and serves as a solution to mitigate India's CO2 emissions (Ozgur et al. 2022).In line with the objective of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7), it is imperative for India to address this issue.
The SDG7 seeks to assure universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy with the following goals: i.By the year 2030, make sure that universal has access to energy that is both affordable and reliable.ii.
By 2030, the proportion of renewable energy used worldwide.iii.
By 2030, there should be an increasing in energy efficiency and should occur at a rate double the current world average.iv.
By 2030, international cooperation among all nations in the research and development of technology relating to renewable and environmentally friendly forms of energy.
Figure 1 provides a comparison of electricity consumption (TWh) from three different energy sources in India.Since 2017, electricity consumption from fossil fuels has exceeded 1000 TWh, which is four times higher than that from renewable sources and thirty times greater than nuclear energy.This comparison between fossil fuels and renewables is crucial in assessing India's progress towards meeting the SDG 2030 targets.Nuclear energy is categorized separately from renewable energy due to its non-renewable nature, despite deriving from uranium sources.Nuclear energy offers advantages such as zero carbon dioxide emissions and minimal environmental contamination.However, its classification as clean energy is a subject of debate due to the potential risks of high radioactive effects in the event of a nuclear reactor accident, as exemplified by the Chornobyl catastrophe in Russia in 1986 (Berger 2010, Ludovici et al. 2020).
Figure 2 demonstrates that India's population is growing at a consistent rate each year, moving from 1,354 million people in 2017 to 1,396 million people in 2020 and starting to reach 1,407 million people in 2021.Compare to the electricity from fossil based, there is increasing pattern from 2017 to 2018 with 6.46%.there is slide downward pattern in between 2019 to 2020 with 5.92%.This is due to the lockdown and mobility restrictions that have been imposed all over the world, which have a knock-on effect of affecting numerous companies that are tied to the consumption of power (Kanitkar 2020).In most cases, this results in a lower demand for electricity during that given year.However, in 2021, several countries started opening their national borders owing to economic pressures (Brodeur et al. 2021, Vyas 2020), which led to an increase in the need for energy.In fact, India demonstrates an increase of 11.25% in high fossil-based power in 2021, which is in line with the increase in the Indian population.
The negative effects on the environment are one of the key issues that arise from India's over reliance on fossil fuels.The combustion of fossil fuels results in the emissions of greenhouse gases, which are a contributing factor in both climate change and global warming.The effects of climate change are already being felt in India, specifically in the form of rising temperatures, an increase in the frequency of heatwaves, and irregular rainfall patterns, all of which are having a negative impact on agricultural and water supplies (Mohammad & Goswami 2019).
It's evident that India relies heavily on fossil fuels to generate electricity, which raises concerns about achieving SDG 7 goals by 2030.India has the potential to make a major reduction in its carbon footprint and to contribute to global efforts to address climate change if it makes the switch to renewable energy sources.
Past studies have tended to focus on the nexus between the energy consumption and economic growth; nevertheless, this study departs from the practice of past studies by examining and comparing the environmental effects of nuclear power, fossil fuels, and renewable forms of energy in India.Employing Autoregressive Distributed Lag(ARDL) and Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag(NARDL) models, this study examines the consumption of all energy sources in India over the period 1985 to 2021.The findings of this study shed light  whether the consumption of renewable and nuclear energy significantly reduces carbon emissions in India, contributing to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7).

Literature Review
The past empirical studies focus to examine the relationship between CO2 emissions consumption with many other variables and reflect the issues with energy crisis.In India, coal and oil serve as the primary sources of energy.Various studies consider these fossil fuels to be crucial components when discussing their effects on the environment.Kartal (2022) conducted a study that involved five countries, including India, from 1965 to 2019.Many others studies also conclude the same, as the utilizing sources of non-renewable energy may result in an increase in CO2 emissions (Lin & Xu 2020, Zhang et al. 2020;Uzair et al. 2022;Mohamad et al. 2023).Therefore, reducing CO2 emissions is an important goal to work toward because its substance is one of the major contributors to climate change (Bauer et al. 2016, Adedoyin et al. 2020, Ehsanullah et al. 2021).
Moreover, the transformation toward renewable energy consumption has a stronger influence on economic growth than non-renewable energy consumption in most of the European countries case studies (Ntanos et al. 2018) and green policy has given more confident for the investor to invest in these countries (Ben Mbarek et al. 2018;Guo et al. 2021). Adekoya et al., (2022) also claim that the African countries gains benefit from the utilise of the renewable energy.
The above-mentioned studies utilised multivariate adaptive regression to analyse the countries' use of fossil fuel, nuclear energy, and renewable sources in relation to environmental degradation.The results showed that fossil fuels have a negative impact on the environment.Furthermore, Ali et al. (2022) and Hossain et al. (2023) discovered that the fossil fuels utilised to generate electricity significantly contribute to the degradation of the environment.Sharif et al. (2020), also found that India among top 10 polluted countries in the world, and with the renewable energy can reduce the CO2 emissions in India.
Numerous studies employ the ARDL methodology to investigate the correlation between CO2 emissions and diverse independent variables.Some researchers in the field of energy security posit that nuclear power can serve as a substitute for fossil fuels.Sadekin et al. (2019) assert that nuclear energy is a dependable and secure energy source that fosters economic growth.In their research, Ozgur et al. (2022) explore the impact of nuclear energy on CO2 emissions by integrating Kuznets' theory into a sustainable evidence interpretation.Their analysis of data spanning from 1970 to 2016 indicates that nuclear energy is a more sustainable option in India than fossil fuels.
Several studies such as Danish et al. (2021), Lau et al. (2019), and Hassan et al. (2020), suggest that India can reduce its CO2 emissions by adopting nuclear energy.Moreover, not only does nuclear energy have a positive impact on the environment, but it also significantly contributes to India's economic growth, as recommended by Bandyopadhyay & Rej (2021).In fact, the utilization of nuclear energy resources has transformed India's economic activity (Wolde-Rudael 2010, Ghosh & Kanjilal 2020).Das et al. (2022) employ the dynamic ARDL method to examine the trend of renewable energy consumption in India over the past two decades, highlighting a gradual increase.Subsequently, Das et al. (2023) assesses the feasibility of India adopting a carbon-neutral agenda by 2070.The authors suggest that a 1% increase in renewable energy consumption leads to a corresponding decrease of 0.8% in CO2 emissions.Similarly, Sreenu (2022) examines the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI), economic growth, and crude oil prices on CO2 emissions in India between the years 1990 and 2020, utilizing both ARDL and NARDL research approaches.
The NARDL approach was employed to assess the significant impact of crude oil consumption, particularly when experiencing positive shocks, on CO2 emissions.Study by Mujtaba & Jena (2021) to examine the impact of economic development, energy use, FDI inflows, and oil toward the CO2 emissions between 1986 and 2014 using the NARDL method.The examination of the asymmetric relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions has received others researchers' attention.Shahbaz et al. (2021) employed the NARDL model on data spanning from 1980 to 2019 and found that positive changes in energy consumption led to increased CO2 emissions, while negative changes in energy consumption result in decreased CO2 emissions in India.Recognizing the significance of renewable energy in attracting investors, Caglar (2020) underscores its role in stimulating investment in the country.
Therefore, there have been a great number of previous studies that have focused on the CO2 emissions in India; however, the purpose of this study is to address the gap in knowledge regarding the impact on the environment caused by different energy consumption in India between the years 1985 and 2021.

Methodology
This study aims to determine the nexus between CO2 emissions and GDP per capita, FDI, and energy consumption from three different sources (fossil, nuclear, and renewable); the general specification and estimation of the models as below: Equation ( 1) can also be rewritten as follows: Data spanning from 1985 to 2021 sourced from various databases was analysed in this study.To gauge the sustainability impact, CO2 emissions per capita data from Our World in Data (OWiD) was used as a proxy.CO2 emissions have been identified as the biggest contributor to climate change (Adedoyin et al. 2020, Sadatshojaie & Rahimpour 2020), and several studies have found it to be a crucial variable in sustainable issues (Abbasi et al. 2021, Yurtkuran 2021, Sreenu 2022).The GDP per capita data from World Development Indicators (WDI) was used as an independent variable, which is an important measure of economic activity (Magazzino et al. 2021).
FDI can have a complex impact on CO2 emissions, as it can lead to both positive and negative effects on the environment, which is an important variable to able this study to use NARDL method (Mujtaba & Jena 2021).The various types of energy that use fossil, nuclear and renewable sources are the classified as the control variables to analyse the impact toward CO2 emissions.There is a risk of having a heteroscedasticity when analysis time series data with various variable.To avoid it, all the variables in Equation ( 2) are transformed in the logarithmic form.
To examine the impact of different sources of energy consumption on CO2 emissions in India, the ARDL model, also known as the bounds testing cointegration technique developed by Pesaran et al. (2001), was employed.This methodology has been widely utilised in past studies to estimate the relationship between CO2 emissions and various sources for electricity generation, as demonstrated by Anwar et al. (2021), Yurtkuran (2021), Sikder et al. (2022), and Kartal et al. (2023).According to Hassler & Wolters (2006), the ARDL model provides an efficient framework for evaluating and estimating long-run connections based on actual time series data, and it does so in a number of different ways.Another method closely related to ARDL is the Johansen (1991) approach.
The cointegration test approach based on Johansen (1991) necessitates that all the variables be integrated in the same order, i.e.I(1) then the cointegration can be analysed.However, if some of the variables were integrated in between I(0) and I(1), then the correlation were not able to be identified.Thus, many researchers used the ARDL model as the method offers more flexibility.Pesaran et al. (2001) suggest that the major advantage of ARDL is its flexibility in analysing variables of different orders of integration and able to interpret the relationship between the selected variables.The ARDL model was used in this study to measure the short-run ECM (Equation 4) and the long-run model (Equation 5).The Equation ( 3) shows the ARDL model as follow: Short run ECM: Long-run model is derived from Equation (4) by assuming that the difference variables are zero, and normalizing the equation, the following model is obtained: In order to evaluate the asymmetric effect of fossil, nuclear and renewable energy consumption on sustainability environment, this study employs the NARDL approach introduced by Shin et al. (2014).The advantage of using the NARDL is able to compare the positive and negative value impact on the CO2 emissions.
=  0 + ∆  To verify the positive and negative shocks of the variables, we employ Equations ( 9) to (11), and the asymmetric method is described below.

Results and Discussion
The study includes 37 observations with annual data spanning from 1985 to 2021.Table 1 presents the statistical description of the variables used in the econometric model.The central tendency measurements of all variables indicate a statistically normal distribution.This conclusion is based on the small difference between the mean and median values, which do not exceed a 10% gap (Yitzhaki 2003).The skewness statistic, tested on all variables, reveals values ranging between 1 and -1, indicating a relatively symmetrical distribution (Bai & Ng 2005, Orcan 2020).
Table 1 demonstrates a strong correlation between the variables, where any increment in one variable corresponds to an increment in the other.The results in the table emphasize that the highest correlation is between CO2 emissions and energy consumption from fossil sources, followed by GDP per capita and energy consumption from nuclear energy.Even though the correlation between CO2 emissions and energy consumption from renewable resources and FDI is the lowest, it nevertheless bears a very strong correlation, as all variables' values exceed 0.7 (Kozak 2009, Ratner 2009).Figure 3  LGDP; log Gross Domestic Product per capita, c.LFDI; log Foreign Direct Investment, d.LFOSSIL; log Energy consumption from fossil resources, e. LNUCL; log Energy consumption from fossil resources and f.LRES; log Energy consumption from renewable resources.The CO2 emissions (LCO2) and energy from fossil (LFOSSIL) patterns for India was reported having consistently increase from 1985 until 2018.It was discovered that India highly dependent on fossil fuels, which caused the nation to emit large amounts of CO2 annually (Udemba et al. 2021;Uzair et al. 2022).Following that, India had a decline in 2019 and the early 2020.However, the CO2 emissions and energy from fossil once more rise at the end of 2021.It was found that this is cause by the environment impact of COVID-19.
According to Gupta et al. (2021), the crisis of COVID-19 has made the people in India to stay at home to prevent the spreading of this virus.Thus, relatively reducing the CO2 emissions been released from transportation such as cars and buses (Pal et al. 2022).Other finding that related with the economy are the track of the Gross Domestic Product per capita (LGDP) in early 2019 and Foreign Direct Investment (LFDI) within 2019 until 2021; as the COVID-19 caused the economy to contract.The lockdown in India has positive impact on the reducing of CO2 emissions (Pradhan & Ghosh 2021), however it damaging the economy caused the decline of the GDP and FDI (Goswami et al. 2021;Jena et al. 2021;Joshi et al. 2020;).According to Kanitkar (2020), the India economy has negatively impact from the most of countries empowered the lockdown.
The nuclear energy (LNUCL) and energy from renewable resources (LRES) represent the clean energy as these 2 resources has minimum impact on damaging the environment (Rehm 2023;Jaiswal et al. 2022).Both of these resources are found strongly increasing trend especially for nuclear energy after year 1995 in Figure 3.This is positive impact from the deal between India and United States, in the "US-India Joint Statement on Civil Nuclear Cooperation", which has enhanced the greater collaboration in civil nuclear technology between these countries (Fuhrmann, 2009;Grover, 2017)..
In order to conduct the ARDL test, it is imperative to ensure that all variables are stationary at level and/or first level in unit root tests (Pesaran et al. 2001).As shown in   are statistically stationary at first difference when using the Phillips-Perron (PP) test.While using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test, it is evident that most variables are stationary at first difference, except for CO2 emissions and energy consumption from renewable resources which are solely stationary at levels.This confirms the presence of cointegration among the variables, thus making it appropriate to use the ARDL approach.
In order to determine whether or not the model is appropriate for long-run co-integration analysis, the ARDL bound test contributes to an extremely important role.Indicating the existence of a long-run relationship in the model is the fact that the estimated F-value must be greater than the upper bound threshold (Coakley & Fuertes 1997, Maddala & Wu 1999, Rehman et al. 2021).The computed value of F is 11.65, and this value is more than both the lower and the upper bound values that were determined for this study (as shown in Table 3).This substantiates the hypothesis that there is, in the long run, a co-integration between the CO2 emissions and the electrical resources.
Table 4 clearly displays two distinct ARDL approaches utilizing the most suitable model (1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 0) for both short and long-term ECM.The study's findings unequivocally demonstrate that all variables are highly significant at 1% in relation to CO2 emission.Moreover, FDI is the sole variable demonstrating significance at 10% and with a positive value.This outcome aligns with other studies such as He et al. (2020) whereby the impact of FDI on CO2 emissions in India was significant and positive.Nevertheless, the GDP per capita is significant but negative value (-0.9546).
The nuclear energy also resulting negative value with -0.0324 with the significant of 1%.Thus, there is a negative cointegration between the income of India and the energy consumption from nuclear energy toward the CO2 emissions.There a study mentioned that nuclear energy is a future energy (Sadekin et al. 2019).This is because nuclear energy was a low CO2 emission (Lenzen 2008, Bisconti 2018, Pata & Samour 2022), there also other studies getting the same results for nuclear energy was less damage to the environment (Danish et al. 2021, Kartal et al. 2023).In the short term, the ECT demonstrates that there is a disequilibrium; nevertheless, it is getting adjusted at the speed of 79% per year towards the equilibrium point in the long run.Meaning, it will take 1 year for short run model get to the equilibrium level.
After analyzing the ECM short run model and comparing it to the long run model, it appears that there are two variables that are not significant.Specifically, FDI with negative value and renewable resources for energy consumption were found to be non-significant.This suggests that there is no relationship between FDI and CO2 emissions long run estimate for ARDL.This finding is consistent with the work of Voumik & Ridwan (2023) who identified the relationship of FDI towards the environment in Argentina.
On the other hand, in the long run ARDL model, GDP and fossil fuel were found to be significant with the same positive value of 1.0401 and 0.5446, respectively.This indicates that there is a correlation between India's income and energy consumption from fossil fuels, which is strongly affecting CO2 emissions.It means that the burning of fossil fuels for generating energy consumption and the increasing GDP in India may result in producing more CO2 emissions.According to Jayanthakumaran et al. (2012) and Pachiyappan et al. (2021), India's competitiveness in the economy has negatively impacted the environment.
The Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS) and Dynamic OLS (DOLS) in Table 5, are the alternative methods to the long-run model.These tests are used to check the robustness of the ARDL long run in Table 4.In the ARDL long run is getting 4 variable significant, and only energy consumption from renewable resources and FDI is not significant.The study can consider the ARDL long run is robust as the significant variables such as GDP, energy consumption from fossil and constant are also found significant in FMOLS and DOLS with positive value.The energy consumption from nuclear energy is also significant because all these robustness tests are getting negative value.Therefore, this clarifies the ARDL long run is considered robust.
The results of the residual diagnostic test in Table 6 show all the findings are normal.There is no heteroskedasticity and serial correlations problem is detected using the Breusch-Godfrey Serial Correlation LM, Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey and ARCH test.The Jarque-Bera test also finds that the data is normally distributed.As shown in Table 7 of the NARDL analysis, both CO2 and GDP values exhibit significant positive trends.The objective of this study is to determine whether India is adequately equipped to accomplish the SDG7 target of creating sustainable energy by 2030.In the past, India has mainly relied on coal for electricity generation (Kopas et al. 2020, Wang & Song 2021), but has now begun to incorporate renewable resources and nuclear energy (Kumar & Majid 2020, Roy & Schaffartzik 2021, Bandyopadhyay & Rej 2021).Therefore, this study examines the effect of different sources of energy consumption on CO2 emissions.By utilizing the NARDL model, the findings indicate the impact on the environment with either a positive or negative sign, providing a more comprehensive perspective on the issue.
According to Mujtaba and Jena's (2021) study, energy consumption in India exhibits a significant positive trend.However, the previous NARDL analysis did not specifically focus on the sources of energy consumption.This study aims to assess whether India is on track to achieve the SDG7 target of sustainable energy by 2030 by analyzing the impact of different types of energy consumption on CO2 emissions.The NARDL model was used to separate energy consumption into three types: fossil, nuclear, and renewable.The findings show that renewable resources have a significant impact on both positive and negative signs at 5%.A positive sign of -0.096 indicates that when electricity is generated from renewable resources, consumption increases, and CO2 emissions may decrease.Conversely, when consumption from renewable resources decreases, CO2 emissions may increase.The negative sign for nuclear energy also yielded the same result.
On the other hand, there is an unexpected result for the electricity generated from fossil sources.The positive sign is significant, which means there is a cointegration towards CO2 emissions.However, the value is -0.5340, indicating that even when consumption of electricity from fossil sources increases, CO2 emissions may decrease.This result contradicts with several studies such as Jackson et al. (2019), Sharma & Kautish (2020), Ali et al. (2022), Wang et al. (2022) which found that the use of fossil fuels may increase CO2 emissions.However, there are also studies supporting the unusual result, as many studies found that clean coal technology can reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere (Jiang et al. 2020, Xie 2021, Jie et al. 2021).According to Joy & Qureshi (2023), it is possible for India to lower the amount of carbon emissions produced by coal-fired power plants by utilizing one of the approaches available, such as new technology less carbon coal.
Generally, the models employed in this study are stable, and all variables can be identified using the CUSUM and CUSUMQ tests to evaluate parameter stability (Pesaran et al. 2001).Moreover, the stability of the model is reinforced by the fact that both a. CUSUM and b.CUSUM of Square fall within the red line, as depicted in Figure 4.

Conclusion
India has the world's second-largest population, after China, with more than 1.4 billion people.As a result of the extremely high population, there is a significant need for energy, which is an essential resource for the expansion and growth of the economy.Therefore, it is of the utmost necessity for India to emphasize the formation of clean energy in their energy policy to achieve the SDG7 by the year 2030.This study found a positive correlation between GDP per capita and CO2 emissions, highlighting the urgent need to reduce India's dependency on fossil fuels.The ARDL analysis further confirms that fossil fuelgenerated energy contributes to CO2 emissions, whereas nuclear-generated energy reduces them.
As India is getting more populated each year and the world is moving toward the sustainable energy, therefore, the India government must implement a renewable energy policy to lower the amount of CO2 it emits annually.Green policies will benefit society and the economy as well.One significant advantage is the reduction of pollution and air pollutants derived from fossil fuels.This will benefit the community's overall health by lowering problems such as respiratory diseases and health issues related to environmental pollution.Moreover, the economic benefits are the increased energy security, and job growth in the renewable energy sector.As the decentralised renewable energy solutions can also close the energy gap between urban and rural areas by empowering rural populations.
The switch to renewable energy is benefiting the environment as well as perhaps drawing in foreign capital to invest in India.Long-term solutions are necessary to address and control the issue of carbonization, and this study underscores the significance of renewable and nuclear energy as alternative energy sources.India must act fast to ensure longterm environmental sustainability and stability, and nuclear energy holds significant potential as a sustainable energy source for future generations.
The fact that there are still more regions in India that need to be thoroughly investigated in the pursuit of more renewable energy sources is one of the limitations of this study.As a result, it is strongly suggested that future studies take into consideration more in-depth measurements of renewable energy sources such as solar, hydro, and wind in India.

Fig. 2
Fig. 2 India population compare to fossil energy.
-4940/© 2024.The Author(s).Published by CBIORE 4940/© 2024.The Author(s).Published by CBIORE these findings, showing an increasing trend for all six variables with minimal fluctuations.The labels in Figure 3 shows a. LCO2; log Carbon dioxide emissions per capita, b.

Table 2 ,
all variables

Table 1
Statistical description and matrix correlation.

Table 4
Selected ECM ARDL Short-run and Long-run