CO 2 Emission, Energy Consumption and Economic Development: A Case of Bangladesh

Environmental awareness and its relation to the development of economy has garnered increased attention in recent years. Researchers, over the years, have argued that sustainable development warrants for minimizing environmental degradation since one depends on the other. This study analyzes the relationship between environmental degradation (carbon emission taken as proxy for degradation), economic growth, total energy consumption and industrial production index growth in Bangladesh from year 1998 to 2013. This study uses Vector Autoregression (VAR) Model and variance decomposition of VAR to analyze the effect of these variables on carbon emission and vice-versa. The findings of VAR model suggest that industrial production and GDP per capita has significant relationship with carbon emission. Further analysis through variance decomposition shows carbon emission has consistent impact on industrial production over time, whereas, industrial production has high impact on emission in the short run which fades in the long run which is consistent with Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Carbon emission rising along with GDP per capita and at the same time having low impact in the long run on industrial index indicates there may be other sources of pollution introduced with the rise in income of the economy over time.