Achieving sustainable development requires an increasing share of green technologies. World energy demand is expected to rise significantly especially in developing economies. The increasing energy demands will be entertained with conventional energy sources at the cost of higher emissions unless eco-friendly technologies are used. This study examines the asymmetric effects of nuclear energy on carbon emissions for Pakistan from 1974 to 2019. Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips Perron (PP) unit root tests suggest that variables are integrated of order one and bound test of Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and nonlinear ARDL confirm a long-run relationship among selected variables. The ARDL, Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS), and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) results show that the coefficient of nuclear energy has a negative and significant impact on emissions in both short and long run. Further, the NARDL finding shows that there exists an asymmetric long-run association between nuclear energy and CO2 emissions. The vector error correction method (VECM) results indicate that there exists a bidirectional causal relationship between nuclear energy and carbon emissions in both the short and long run. Additionally, the impact of nuclear energy on ecological footprint has been examined and our findings remain robust.
