Impact of Information and Communication Technology on CO2 Emissions

Abstract

The significant improvements have been achieved in information and communication technologies. Furthermore, use of information and communication technologies have been spread swiftly in the world with the contribution of globalization. The raising ICT penetration has led many social, economic, and environmental impacts for the countries. In this study, the interaction between ICT indicators and CO2 emissions was analyzed in sample of EU transition countries over the 1996-2018 period through causality analysis with cross-sectional dependency. The causality analysis revealed a unilateral causality from internet usage to CO2 emissions in Croatia, Czech Republic; a unilateral causality from mobile cellular subscriptions to CO2 emissions in panel and in Croatia, Estonia, Romania and Slovak Republic, and a unilateral causality from CO2 emissions to internet usage in Romania. In other words, the ICT had a significant impact on CO2 emissions.